Last year, I used my data, but getting a signal was iffy. Is there public access wifi, or even pay to connect this year?
Yep, there's going to be free wi-fi for attendees this year!
You should sign up for the official mailing list so you'll get all the big news like that. :)
https://www.gencon.com/profile
Awesome! Thanks.
Going to be interesting to see how the wifi coverage is...and whether or not there will be adequate bandwidth. Fingers crossed.
Yeah... Bandwidth for 40-50k+ people is not a small order
The ICC hosts conventions even larger then Gen Con, where all of the people are concentrated within the ICC, as opposed to spread out over multiple venues like they are at Gen Con. As long as the wi-fi provider has done some of the other large conventions, they should have an idea on how to handle the load. If it's some new provider, well, then, who knows what we'll get.
One would hope the ICC has a solid business relationship with a provider given the size of the conventions held there.
Best case we get a good usable connection. Worst case we get a new amusing drama filled yearly complaint thread topic.
Right...Bringing Popcorn
However, one thing that may cut the other way is the free wifi part of this. This isn't something that has happened at Gen Con in the past, and I suspect may not have been offered to any group this size before. We'll see.
And as people have pointed out, this is for the ICC not the surrounding hotels or Lucas Oil for that matter.
They stated the wi-fi would cover the ICC and LOS, but no indication it would cover the hotels (they probably have their own). My point about being spread out was given the distance between the ICC & LOS, they can overlap their hotspots.
So David Hoppe sends a letter threatening to pull Gen Con from Indy and now we get free Wi Fi. I bet it crashes the 1st day.
if you have a newer phone and are an ATT customer 5G is available in Indy. I'm getting about 100 mbps down and 26 mbps up.