2G/4G/Options - San Francisco...
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Hi folks,
Hopefully one of you have an answer to this; some of our sales team from the UK will be going to SF in December. This is to do demonstrations of our product at a conference (web access is needed). The conference is in the Hilton Hotel, specifically: 333 O'Farrell St, San Francisco, CA 94102, USA Hilton Hotel.
The problem: for 4 days internet access, the Hilton want to charge close to $4000 (before tax I assume). That is insane cost for 4 days of Internet access. Other options must be possible and would cost far less...
I have never been to the US, so have no idea what sort of 3G/4G or wireless/comms options are available. I assume the same as the UK (probably better). If so, in the UK I can get a 3G/4G dongle which can plug in to a laptop and give Internet access. With roaming charges on, this will cost, but would work in the US, and will still be < $4k.
The tricky part is this: Would we get coverage at the Hilton Hotel in SF? I had a look online, but couldn't find anything that helped. What is coverage like in the SF for carriers? Would we likely get 3G/4G? We would use BT mobile dongle from over here, I just assume this would work in the US via roaming charges and just switch carrier like it does when in Europe...
Another option: for $4000 we could get a laptop, loaded with two licensed 2012 R2 VMs, and run our site offline locally. That still comes to less than 4k! Shocking price. But, this means sales need to know how to troubleshoot VMs as I cant exactly remote in to the lappy when they have no Internet access (potentially risky)...
Third option: just pay the $4000 - yes its an option, although, its one I would hate to follow. Is Internet access really that costly in the US?!
Other options? Thoughts? (Also posted on Spiceworks).
Thanks,
Jim -
SF coverage is really good. It's one of the US tech centers. Verizon, AT&T and TMobile are your big carriers. Sprint is fourth.
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Yes, dongles are available, that's no problem.
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@nerdyfem4life @deathofasellout @craig-theriac @CraigElliott @Technomancer are all in SF, maybe someone will know specifically about that hotel and the coverage on the inside.
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@scottalanmiller said in 2G/4G/Options - San Francisco...:
SF coverage is really good. It's one of the US tech centers. Verizon, AT&T and TMobile are your big carriers. Sprint is fourth.
That's as I would have thought. The problem though is if the sales folk have a dongle, get to the conference, and its say underground, or in the basement or what not - no coverage. WE generally have good coverage in London - sometimes though you go to a basement and boom - no 3G/4G - looking towards the VM idea at the moment as main option, and 3G as backup.
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Seems like buying a month to month dongle like a MiFi in the US would make more sense than bringing something over. You might be able to get a handful of them for different users to share as most support five users at a time. Check with Verizon about this.
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@Jimmy9008 said in 2G/4G/Options - San Francisco...:
This is to do demonstrations of our product at a conference (web access is needed).
The conference itself is not providing Internet access? I would expect that to be part of presenting.
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@StrongBad I would totally expect that as well. Every conference I've ever worked with, the conference gets WiFi access for everyone. It's part of using the hotel facilities.
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@StrongBad said in 2G/4G/Options - San Francisco...:
@Jimmy9008 said in 2G/4G/Options - San Francisco...:
This is to do demonstrations of our product at a conference (web access is needed).
The conference itself is not providing Internet access? I would expect that to be part of presenting.
Nope. To have that provided is $4000 for 4 days.
The US seems very expensive. The sales guys just told me a story that they were quoted, for one US conference, for $300 for carpet. They took the price of and said no to carpet - when they got to the conference, somebody had cut a large chunk of carpet out around where they were based for the day! Wow. A huge floor space, all one nice carpet, now with a whole in the middle!
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@Jimmy9008 said in 2G/4G/Options - San Francisco...:
@StrongBad said in 2G/4G/Options - San Francisco...:
@Jimmy9008 said in 2G/4G/Options - San Francisco...:
This is to do demonstrations of our product at a conference (web access is needed).
The conference itself is not providing Internet access? I would expect that to be part of presenting.
Nope. To have that provided is $4000 for 4 days.
The US seems very expensive. The sales guys just told me a story that they were quoted, for one US conference, for $300 for carpet. They took the price of and said no to carpet - when they got to the conference, somebody had cut a large chunk of carpet out around where they were based for the day! Wow. A huge floor space, all one nice carpet, now with a whole in the middle!
The US is weird. But a hotel not providing WiFi to a conference attendee is super weird. Who quoted the price, the hotel or the conference organizers? If the hotel, that's the wrong party to talk to. If the conference organizers, that's just them trying to charge you for presenting at their conference.
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I'm not sure how this can work, just get your people Hilton memberships. All Hilton Honors members get free wifi. So just by being there, they have to have access. If I just showed up randomly to the Hilton San Fran, I'd have WiFi access.
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@scottalanmiller said in 2G/4G/Options - San Francisco...:
I'm not sure how this can work, just get your people Hilton memberships. All Hilton Honors members get free wifi. So just by being there, they have to have access. If I just showed up randomly to the Hilton San Fran, I'd have WiFi access.
Checked with Sales. They have this package, but they say the hotels are huge and the WiFi doesn't always stretch to the conference center. Also, as the conference is busy, the WiFi is saturated and slow. Which is not good for demonstrations. Looks like the quote is for use of an actual physical wall socket via cat5/e/6/whatever... even then, 4k sounds like a lot to me.
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4K is not that high for a conference feature.
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@scottalanmiller said in 2G/4G/Options - San Francisco...:
4K is not that high for a conference feature.
It is for us
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I'm really considering getting a 2012R2 license, creating a VM, and running from the laptop. Least it costs way less.
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@Jimmy9008 said in 2G/4G/Options - San Francisco...:
I'm really considering getting a 2012R2 license, creating a VM, and running from the laptop. Least it costs way less.
Way more reliable, too. And can be used over and over again
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@scottalanmiller said in 2G/4G/Options - San Francisco...:
@Jimmy9008 said in 2G/4G/Options - San Francisco...:
I'm really considering getting a 2012R2 license, creating a VM, and running from the laptop. Least it costs way less.
Way more reliable, too. And can be used over and over again
This looks to be my preferred option. Just waiting on our developers to confirm if they would be ok with only 16GB of RAM on the laptop, a 'light' version of the site just for demonstration purposes.
Our main site cant be put straight on the laptop for remote offline demo's as it uses 100's of GB of RAM; but just for demo purposes I hope they can create a light version. Lets see
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Ok, so i'm going with a VM. Development will cut the databases loaded in to memory down to 12/13GB, but for demo purposes, its fine.
Thanks folks,
Jim -
I suspect that that will be far better. San Francisco is famous for poor connectivity as well.
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The whole of carpet sounds weird - typically what I've seen is carpet in the walkways.. if you want it in the booth, you pay for that.
Unions are one of the things killing pricing. Of course you can't blame them for the internet fees - that's just them holding you hostage because they can.
While the convention center at Denver Comic Con does provide WiFi, it's so saturated that it's useless. Hell, during Dragon Con, even outside on the street it's nearly impossible to make a phone call or a SMS message with the 90K people in a 4 block area. I'm guessing the phone companies could fix this (how else do you service football stadiums with 140K people?)
