If anyone is still doubting the market reach of the iPhone, this should prove beyond a doubt how popular it still is with the tech crowd.

Word from the South By Southwest convention, also known as the biggest techno-hipster gathering on the planet, is that AT&T's 3G network in the Austin area hosting the festival crashed yesterday under the weight of iPhone traffic.

I'd venture to say that Twitter should at least get the assist on this one. The micro-blogging service allows users to post updates directly from their iPhones, and many, many do. No doubt that the sheer volume of people using Twitter to talk to friends, organise parties and plot out their schedules puts a pretty major strain on the network.

Given that a festival with an estimated attendance of 10,000 was able to bring down the local 3G network raises some interesting questions. How many iPhones and how much traffic must it have taken to bring down the network in one of Texas' largest cities, while a crowd more than ten times that size at CES could hardly cause more than a short delay?

17 Mar 2009