October 23, 2024
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We’re fortunate here at Metro Wireless to design and deploy connectivity and WiFi for multiple events across the country each year.
With that in mind, we think we’ve learned a thing or two regarding best practices for executing these temporary WiFi solutions, for both big events and small.
This article is written for event planners and event IT staff who are responsible for procuring and managing internet and WiFi connectivity for their event(s). We work with these individuals every week to help them execute seamless connectivity, all while providing peace of mind and keeping their stress low.
If you’re looking for internet service and/or WiFi connectivity for the following types of events, reach out to us:
A shameless plug: please reach out to us here if you’re planning to offer internet and WiFi for your next festival or event, we’d love to roll up our sleeves and work with you!
We’ve been in the commercial wireless connectivity industry for over a decade, and our team has a collective 100+ years of experience in this sector.
While we won’t claim to know it all (our midwestern roots forbid us from bragging too much!), we have seen just about it all when it comes to executing wireless WiFi connectivity for events and conferences.
We offer design and deployment services, as well as on-site monitoring during your event. We send our installation team to turn-up and turn-down your event, providing you peace of mind that your event won’t have any internet outages.
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We have a number of tools in our toolbelt in order to deliver industry leading wireless connectivity.
For internet connectivity, we offer fixed wireless microwave (especially in Metro Detroit and Downtown Detroit!), managed business Starlink, and LTE/5G based internet access, with speeds up to 20Gbps!
Please reach out to us at sales@metrowireless.com if you have any fixed wireless DIA needs in the Metro Detroit or Downtown Detroit area for your event.
For managed WiFi, we work with industry leading WiFi hardware manufacturers like Ruckus, Aruba, Cambium, and Ubiquiti. We design, procure the hardware, provision, install, and manage these networks for our clients.
By pairing both our internet and WiFi solutions, your event connectivity will go without a hitch.
Our core values include ‘giving a damn’ and treating your connectivity like the mission critical need it is.
We know first hand how painful it is when vendors lose access to their point-of-sale when the event internet cuts off. DJ booths lose access, and critical event staff communications lose their pathways.
Our team at Metro Wireless will roll up our sleeves to design solutions with failover and redundancy, minimizing the potential for any service disruptions.
While we’re proudly based in Detroit, Michigan, we offer internet and WiFi solutions to our event clients nationwide.
Don’t hesitate to reach out if you want a free consultation on your next event!
We find our best client fit are event planners and IT teams who value highly reliable and high quality WiFi solutions.
These clients are typically seeking to have:
While we have some more affordable solutions that might fit limited and smaller event needs, we typically don’t have solutions under $5,000.
Kicking off festival and event WiFi and connectivity: it’s all about project scoping and design
We occasionally find that event planners and IT teams have wild aspirations in delivering overly-built WiFi networks for their vendors and attendees. This can lead to over-scoping the project and delivery of eye-popping, expensive proposals from vendors who will gladly overcharge (and risk not winning the bid).
We here at Metro Wireless prefer to have frank and honest discussions about actual needs – we don’t talk bits and bytes – but understand what the needs are.
We’ll go out on a limb and say you likely don’t need a 1Gbps dedicated (DIA) internet circuit for your 500 attendee event with only 10 POS machines, but you do need a redundant wireless internet connection supported by a robust Managed WiFi connection.
Don’t think we’re not capable of delivering best-in-class, but what’s required for the Olympics is likely different then what you actually need.
One of our first questions in designing an event internet and WiFi solution is “What’s the mission critical need? What is simply nice to have?”
In more detail, we typically ask the following discovery questions when planning event WiFi solutions:
Once we know more about the above, we can start to sketch out a network design and proposal that fits the true needs and budget of our event clients.
Though perhaps counterintuitive, across all the events we’ve deployed internet WiFi networks for, we find that fewer than 25% of event attendees actually log onto WiFi networks where public access has been made available!
Even in areas with limited cellular coverage or without other public access WiFi networks available, we find this metric to hold true. It’s a little inside secret we like to tell our clients.
With that in mind, be sure not to overspend and over provision your event WiFi network for attendees or client devices that will never actually use your network.
Further, when scoping the backbone internet connection, we find that users require less than 5 Mbps per device on average. Event connectivity is typically intended for low-bandwidth intensive use cases like POS transactions, checking messages/email, and posting to social media – not streaming 4K Netflix on your home TV.
We very rarely see max bandwidth usage exceed 100 Mbps at any point during any event we’ve supported. Another little secret in planning event WiFi.
While delivering robust WiFi coverage is usually top of mind for event planners in charge of procuring internet access for their events and conferences, we cannot forget about any wired connection needs.
We’ve found that many DJ booths, TV streamers, and event planning staff require a handful of wired CAT5/6 ethernet connections to their equipment.
It’s also our preference to hard-wire all the WiFi access points where possible, avoiding meshed backhaul connections where possible.
Some event planners conflate internet connectivity with WiFi networks. These are separate items which require separate scoping and planning.
However, most event planners typically conflate these two items because most vendors– like us at Metro Wireless– offer both the internet and the WiFi connectivity.
As mentioned above, planning the managed wireless network for a festival is only part of the battle. Scoping and selecting the backbone internet connection is equally important.
Depending on the type and scale of events, we scope and procure DIA fiber and fixed-wireless connections, coax connections, and LTE/5G and Starlink wireless connections on behalf of our clients.
While some clients absolutely require and benefit from expensive DIA circuits, we find that most events require less than 100Mbps at any given time, and hence wireless connectivity– which provides anywhere from 30Mbps to 550Mbps of download speed– is a great option for most event needs. Wireless internet typically provides 20-50Mbps upload speeds as well.
Wireless-based internet service has matured greatly in recent years. 5G is a greatly improved network over 4G/LTE and now Starlink has changed the game with ultra fast speeds and low latency.
It’s also more reliable than ever. In fact, we promise a 99.9% uptime guarantee on all of our LTE/5G and Starlink internet service for events. This provides event planners peace of mind in ensuring their internet connection won’t go down and their WiFi network will stay operable for the duration of their event.
While Starlink has had a residential service offering for a few years, we at Metro Wireless offer its business grade service, and we’re part of their Authorized Solution Provider program.
Starlink offers event planners the most flexibility for their deployments. As it’s reliant on lower earth orbit (LEO) satellites versus cellular towers, Starlink can be deployed anywhere! There’s no concern for being close to a wireline connection or cell tower.
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Speeds for a single Starlink dish are typically 220 Mbps downloads and 20Mbps uploads, given our observations from deployments across the country. Latency is typically <50Ms, which is great for video conferencing, video streaming, live broadcasting, and gaming.
Read on below for options to bond multiple Starlink dishes together with 5G for even faster speeds and carrier redundancy.
Cellular based wireless internet has long been the dominant option for providing event connectivity, and for good reason – over 97% of America is covered with LTE or 5G coverage from at least one carrier. In short, it’s available almost everywhere.
It’s also a very cost effective option for deploying at most events, and typically provides adequate speeds for most use cases.
We’re typically seeing 30-500 Mbps download speeds, and 10-50Mbps upload speeds on our LTE/5G routers, depending on local tower conditions.
We can boost those speeds by bonding multiple 5G carrier SIMs together (e.g., Verizon + AT&T) too.
Bonding Multiple WAN internet connections together (e.g., Starlink + 5G, or Starlink + Fiber DIA)
At Metro Wireless, we have the ability to bond multiple internet connections together to:
This is a common request for our team, so please be sure to ask about it and consider it for your next event.
Within Metro Detroit, including Downtown Detroit, we offer clients DIA internet access service via our own managed Fixed Wireless network.
We can deploy circuits with speeds up to 20Gbps, and have the ability to deploy in other markets, depending on the location.
Fixed Wireless DIA is still a great option for event planners who require a dedicated (i.e., DIA) circuit yet at an affordable rate.
Early in our discussions with event planners we ask how mission critical it is for them to not have any internet or WiFi outages during their event.
If perfect or near perfect uptime and reliability is imperative for their event’s success, we then discuss solutions that can help provide them peace of mind.
Options include procuring multiple backbone internet connections (e.g., by bonding LTE/5G and Starlink together), or wireless with wireline connections. While a bit more expensive, procuring two internet connections instead of one can really bolster uptime.
Further, we can scope incredibly robust WiFi networks that are self-healing and redundant.
Again, anything can be done, it all just depends on budget!
Event planners and those in charge of IT and event connectivity must start their vendor conversations sufficiently early in order to ensure a smooth deployment.
Due to the complexity involved, we recommend that event planners in charge of procuring internet and WiFi connectivity for their event to reach out at least two to three months prior to their event date or event weekend.
This provides adequate time to gather floor plans, event space diagrams and have conversations with key stakeholders from the event planning committee.
One of the key discovery questions we ask when scoping a festival WiFi solution is to understand whether the mission is to provide internet service to all the event’s attendees, or just to vendors and event personnel. This has a huge impact on the budget for an event!
Providing connectivity just to vendor staff and event personnel, typically for point-of-sale (POS) transactions and communications, can be less bandwidth intensive, and require much less WiFi infrastructure to be deployed. Hence, cost savings can result from simpler deployments.
During these initial scoping conversations, we ask the key stakeholders what’s a ‘must have’ versus a ‘nice to have’.
Event planners often work on limited budgets, and everyone likes to save money. Typically we find our clients can save money on their event WiFi in two areas:
Too often we have clients reach out last minute to procure internet and WiFi for their temporary event or festival. It’s hard to help them because we typically need to scramble (and thus charge more than we’d like) to design and deploy a quality solution that’ll fit their needs perfectly.
Rush jobs can be done, but it’s not best practice, and unfortunately often induces stress for the event planners. So please reach out early, preferably three months or more, prior to your event date or weekend!
It’s easy for event planners who don’t work day to day in IT or technology to forget that an internet connection is disparate from a WiFi network.
Both are critical to having a successful event or conference, and hence we advocate for being thoughtful, and having adequate budget, for both components.
The easiest way to get in touch with our expert team to design and deploy internet and WiFi for your event is to contact us at sales@metrowireless.com. Once you reach out, we’ll schedule a discovery meeting to understand your requirements and see how we can support your next event!
All design services are complimentary, so don’t hesitate to reach out!
Tyler Hoffman
CEO
