Qwest's best-laid plans for DNC get last-minute twist

The expectation is that much of the traffic emanating from the Pepsi Center and Invesco Field at Mile High will be blogger traffic, including video blogs, in addition to the traditional media, Ward said.

The good news, Ward said, is that Qwest is doing for the DNC what it does for its corporate clients as a matter of course, so the challenges are more time and scale than competence. Qwest will be bringing in extra support personnel for the duration of the DNC event but is also promising that customers elsewhere won’t suffer.

“We have pledged that the rest of our customers are not going to be negatively impacted by this,” Ward said. “We aren’t changing service delivery windows or slowing down orders. We have been hard on people’s summer vacation plans, unfortunately.”

Qwest is not providing wireless service to the DNC, and Ward has concerns that wireless networks may not be as secure and robust as they need to be during this kind of event.

“We weren’t chosen to do the wireless service by the DNC,” Ward said. “The DNC are viewing this much the same way as we are – as a very sophisticated enterprise level network they are running for this convention. They did not want to put any mission-critical type applications in the wireless environment. There is too much risk of interference when you think about 20,000 people, most of which will have wireless phones. Much of the communications between cameras also is done on RF [radio frequency] devices. The chance for interference inside Pepsi Center is pretty high, which is why the DNC chose not to put anything mission-critical on wireless networks, and we agreed with that.”