Opinion: How Denver handles all that Democratic chatter on cellphones

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Along with the thousands of Democrats pouring into Denver in preparation for the Democratic National Convention, there will also be a few cows. No, Elsie isn’t on the Democratic ticket (yet). These cows are much more technological -- they’re cell sites on wheels, also known as COWs.

Wireless providers have spent months ensuring their networks can handle the sudden flood of calls and text messages that’ll be made during the Democratic convention, which began today in Denver, and the Republican National Convention, which begins next Monday in St. Paul, Minn. That includes bringing in COWs and COLTs (cell sites on light trucks), which cost around $20,000 each to deploy.

‘We’re looking at the largest amount of data and traffic to cross our wireless network of any event to date,’ said Jace Barbin, general manager of AT&T for the Rocky Mountain region. Our co-blogger Alana Semuels over at the Technology blog has much more details on this behind-the-scenes development.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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