Thousands of eager concert-goers wait for the outdoor festival gates to open, all of them excited for the evening ahead.
Ticket-takers patiently scan virtual tickets on cell phones. Inside the gates, vendors serve up t-shirts and snacks, ringing up orders on wireless payment devices that customers pay using RFID wristbands. Plenty of patrons are still in their cars outside the venue, using tablets to find up-to-the-second information on parking. And fans already inside the festival grounds snap selfies in front of the stage, then post them on Instagram and Facebook for their friends to envy. Behind the scenes, festival staff, event sponsors and media members use a range of wireless devices to do their jobs as the show draws nearer.
All of the commerce, merchandising and multimedia production is made possible by reliable Wi-Fi, delivered on a scale big enough to accommodate tens of thousands of people at once. Womble Bond Dickinson client TOURtech provides those necessary Wi-Fi services, building and operating temporary networks at spots where this technological infrastructure doesn’t normally exist, such as major concerts, festivals, corporate events, conferences and sporting events. The Raleigh-based company also provides VoIP, internet connection management, and mobile office solutions for these types of events.
At Lollapalooza 2018, for example, TOURtech transformed Chicago’s Grant Park into a fully functioning Wi-Fi location during the four-day music festival. For Lollapalooza, TOURtech deployed:
- 500+ devices
- Three miles of fiber cable
- More than 17 miles of Cat5 cable, and
- An on-site emergency broadcast system.
This was the ninth consecutive year that TOURtech has provided Wi-Fi solutions at Lollapalooza. For an event of this scale, the small but efficient TOURtech crew comes in around about 2 weeks before the event to begin set-up, and they remain on-site through the event to make sure everything runs smoothly. Each job is customized to the needs of that particular event, with an eye on providing TOURtech clients—and their customers—with the best possible experience.
Womble Bond Dickinson attorney Scott Bowers has been a part of TOURtech’s journey from start-up to established industry leader. “This space was pioneered by TOURtech and hands down, they lead the way,” Bowers said.
He began working with the company 10 years ago. TOURtech Founder & CEO Al Cook had just moved to Raleigh from California and needed to set up the company’s business operations in North Carolina. Bowers helped with that initial corporate work. As the company has grown, its business operations and legal needs have evolved, and Womble Bond Dickinson attorneys have been privileged to have provided guidance for the company along the way.
Click here to watch a short video on TOURtech at Lollapalooza.