Skift Take
A lot of the same issues that plagued conference Wi-Fi 10 years ago are still around today, even as good internet becomes more and more of a necessity.
Sluggish internet speeds, a network that suddenly cuts out, and odd corners of the room that somehow have adequate service as long as you hold your phone at a specific angle. These are the problems that nearly every conference attendee, trying in vain to use the provided Wi-Fi, has faced at least once, especially at a large event.
In fact, providing good Wi-Fi is one of the top challenges meeting planners face, with over half reporting ongoing issues with it, according to a recent report by EventMB, Skift's event intelligence platform. Much of this is simply due to the way Wi-Fi works, and no matter what changes are made, service at events will likely never be perfect.
That said, many planners don’t make internet access a priority, as odd as that sounds in the era of the smartphone, and many more have little awareness of what to look for when it comes to organizing good Wi-Fi.
“It’s really an afterthought for many people,” said Tara Thomas, co-founder of The Meeting Pool, an organization that helps coordinate tech for events. “They don’t understand how frustrated participants get. More frustrated than if the food is bad. If the food’s bad, they can just get something else.”
“I think Wi-Fi is just a really complex, sort of esoteric topic for lots of people to understand,” said Ian Framson, sales director and co-founder of Trade Show Internet, an event Wi-Fi provider.
According to Framson, the biggest mistake many planners make is assuming that Wi-Fi is just Wi-Fi, and that a
