How to Choose the Right WiFi Solution for Your Event

How to Choose the Right WiFi Solution for Your Event

Organizing an event is a huge responsibility, and choosing the right WiFi hotspot can be critical to your event's success. Each year, millions of trade show, convention, and exhibition attendees share their stories online, reaching people across the world through the power of social media. The organizers of such big events can ensure a significant advantage for themselves by providing their guests with one very basic facility - an excellent wireless network. Today, everything from event registration to cashless buying to social media sharing is highly dependent on the Internet. As such, a reliable Internet connection may be the single most important thing that you, as an organizer, should invest in for any event.

Here are a few key points to keep in mind while choosing a WiFi provider for your event.

Planning

Once you've decided on the venue, it's important to consider the arrangement of  your Internet connection system. Many venues offer in-house WiFi packages. Alternatively, you could opt to have mobile hotspots installed at the venue or build a temporary network from scratch, depending on the size and scope of your event.

With so many options available, comparing them and deciding on the most suitable one can be a challenging task. So what do you do?

Before finalizing your  location and setting up the  WiFi at your chosen venue, take a moment to complete the following two preparatory steps:

• Acquaint yourself with your chosen venue's surroundings, such as whether it’s in an urban area or in the countryside. Urban areas have better carrier strength as compared to the countryside, where signal towers can be few and far between. Therefore, cellular-based solutions are better suited for urban environments.

• Be mindful of where you want to host your event:  in the open air, on the first (or second or third, and so on) floor of a building, or even in an underground area. Building materials like wood, sheetrock, and cinder block can inhibit the reception of cellular and WiFi signals, leading to patchy network connectivity. These factors can be overcome with non-cellular solutions, but such networks are typically more expensive to deploy.

Installing the WiFi Hotspot for Your Event

Due to high demand, event venues often spend millions on WiFi infrastructure and network management and maintenance. All that cost is then reimbursed by charging event organizers very high prices to rent out the venue with WiFi included. For example, a major convention center typically charges over $80,000 for standard in-house WiFi.

As well as cost, it is equally important to consider the benefits of having access to on-site technical support throughout an event, an option that is currently offered by very few venues. Having no technical support can put an otherwise successful event at great risk of failure as a result of unexpected network deficiencies.

If sticking to your budget is a concern, consider investing in mobile hotspots – an inexpensive alternative to in-house Wifi. A mobile hotspot is a wireless router with access points connecting individuals to the web by means of a single or various cellular carrier systems. With just one of these gadgets, you can connect up to 100 individuals surfing at 100 Mbps or more. In the event you need to connect more than 100 users, you might take advantage of several access points for extra coverage.

Mobile hotspots l are cost-effective, as you only pay for the data used during your event instead of paying for a  comprehensive package that charges a fixed amount regardless of how much data is consumed.

Our Solutions

5G Internet Kit & WiFi Hotspot - This is the ultimate portable WiFi solution for any event – large or small. It contains everything you need to connect up to 15 devices to the Internet at a single time. The broadband produces ideal bandwidth for surfing the web, checking email, and doing software demos. This rental solution is extremely reliable and less expensive than a typical venue’s in-house Internet solution.

5G Mega Internet Kit & WiFi Hotspot – Whether you're hoping to replace your venue’s in-house WiFi with a less costly alternative or provide connectivity in a zone with no existing network, you can bank on this rental solution. Our router connects to three or more of the major 5G LTE carriers, with built-in bandwidth redundancy to keep your guests online at all times. This solution is especially effective for larger events that will likely see 100 or more connected devices.

Custom Solutions: For events in which significant footfall and a reasonably higher than 100-device connectivity are expected, Trade Show Internet can design and deploy a custom high-density wireless network. Our custom WiFi solutions are not only created to meet your exact needs but are also managed and monitored by our team of on-site network engineers to ensure uninterrupted connectivity.

Conclusion

In addition to event attendees being highly appreciative of a  smooth web-surfing experience, their positive reaction to your brand will add value to your business and improve your goodwill. Sharing experiences on social media is commonplace in this day and age, so it's important to always be extra-prepared for the provision of a fast, secure, and reliable Internet connection at any event with Trade Show Internet.

Are you ready to start organizing the WiFi for your upcoming event? Let’s talk about how we can help.