Entertainment Geek Fest in Austin Causes AT&T iPhoneOutage

The South By Southwest music/film/interactive festival in Austin was attended by so many iPhone users, AT&T had problems keeping the network working.

According to Daniel Terdiman at CNET, "it was nearly impossible to call anyone inside the Austin Convention Center because the cell service was so poor. And because it seemed like nearly everyone at the conference has an iPhone, that meant that very few phone calls were going through."

Sunday night, AT&T said that it was trying to improve capacity with this statement:

"To accommodate unprecedented demand for mobile data and voice applications at SXSW, we are actively working this afternoon to add capacity to our cell sites serving downtown Austin. 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 continue to monitor network performance throughout the event, and will do everything possible to maximize network performance throughout. We apologize to customers who were inconvenienced during this surge in local network demand."