Last month at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, I sat in press conference after press conference wanting to pull my hair out in utter frustration, because even though I had 100 percent signal strength on my wireless air card, I could barely load a Web page.

My 3G Sprint air card, which under normal circumstances provides me with a very reliable, stable, and usable Internet connection, slowed to a crawl when I needed it the most. I've had similar experiences at other venues using other wireless networks. At the U.S. Open in New York City this summer, I could barely make a phone call on my AT&T iPhone. And sending or receiving e-mails on my iPhone was unthinkable at peak times of the day during the tournament. Last spring, while attending a Pearl Jam concert in Madison Square Garden, I was also unable to post pictures to Facebook via a Verizon Wireless Motorola Droid.

The reason? In each instance, the network was simply overloaded. At CES, my fellow bloggers and journalists were trying to file their stories at the same time I was. And at the U.S. Open and Pearl Jam concert, thousands of other fans were also making phone calls, uploading pictures, sending and receiving e-mail, downloading apps, and surfing the Web.

The crush of users in one concentrated area, who were all trying to use the network at the same time, was too much for the network to handle. As a result, these networks became practically unusable.