Technical question:

Can anyone tell me how a cell phone tower capacity is provisioned to serve very large numbers of mobile devices?

Examples, sports stadiums, airports, conference centres etc.

I was at the Durban ICC a few nights ago, at the Baptist World Congress, and several thousand smart phones were competing for access to the GSM network.

The signal was there, but connectivity was non existent. Delegates used wifi and text messages to communicate.

Preumably the network was swamped, and the capacity was exceeded, resulting in a GSM network 'meltdown'

I have never experienced this before, can anyone in the industry enlighten me?