Even with these rules in place, there must be millions of cellphones broadcasting packets in the wi-fi frequency, even if they are not sharing a 3G connection. I understand why you would want to avoid interference for all official event radio and data, but there are already at least 1500 wifi radios around. Not many people use hotspots, would it really matter?
> Those radio frequencies he lists are all in the FM band, way below wi-fi.
Sorry to be nitpicky, but you probably meant UHF instead of FM. Either way you're right, and a stronger argument is that hundreds of people operating wifi hotspots would cause interference for the millions of cellphones (ever try to make a call at a music festival? get wifi at a networking conference?).
Yes, I meant VHF/UHF. Deleted that, it's an argument I don't want to be in :)
Bad wi-fi at conferences seems to be mostly due to radios with too little processing power, misconfigured radios, positioning and software. There have been successful wi-fi deployments at confs in the thousands.
I'm curious about the cellphone, I never had that problem (never made any calls from a packed front-line crowd though). There doesn't seem to be any overlap in mobile frequencies and wi-fi, other than 4G starting at the very edge?
Try any sporting events in the UK such as horse racing at Cheltenham. It'll be impossible to make any mobile calls due to the number of devices and lack of coverage by the masts. Wireless space is limited too (too many wifi devices) so they can use things like a wireless lan controller (from Cisco, for example) to send disconnect packets to any rogue APs, forcing them to become useless.
