iPhone Users Test AT&T at SxSW

By Stephen Chilton Wed., Mar. 18 2009 at 11:52 AM

Categories: Other People's Blogs, SXSW

The music portion of SxSW starts today, but the interactive portion finished yesterday. One of the big stories out of interactive this past weekend was how ill-prepared AT&T was for the influx of iPhone-wielding hipsters and geeks descending on Austin.

Tens of thousands of attendees are using their phones far more than usual to stay in touch with everyone else at the conference, meet up with co-workers and do the sort of networking that people who go to this kind of industry event do.

Also, crowds of twittering hipsters are placing additional strain on AT&T as conference-goers use the popular micro-blogging service to communicate what is going on to those outside the festival.

AT&T said in a recently released statement that they are adding capacity to deal with the demand.

"These efforts are ongoing, but we anticipate that customers should see improved network performance this evening and for the remainder of the event."

We will see if it is ready for the 2,000-plus bands and tens of thousands of fans arriving today.

Read more at Wired.com: SxSW: iPhone Influx Pushes AT&T to the Limit.
BusinessInsider.com: AT&T Fails the SxSW iPhone Test & AT&T Adding Capacity At SxSW to Deal With iPhone Crush

Note: I am on the road as I write this on my way to SxSW with Kinch.

Disclosure: 3 of the 5 of us in the Kinch van have our iPhones with us and we are twittering and klogging.

Fallout: What geat marketing by AT&T: Get the country's biggest taste makers, trend setters, bloggers, tech-writers, early adopters and twitterers in one place and have them all talking, blogging and tweeting about how they hate your service.