Spotty, slow cell service reported on Parkway despite big WiFi upgrades

City officials billed this weekend's Made in America festival as a chance to test a beefed-up cellular network in advance of the pope's visit at the end of the month.

The early returns? According to users, not great.

"The phone service is really terrible," said Eliza Stoughton, of North Carolina.

"Terrible," Elizabeth Harner, a student at the University of Pennsylvania, said of the cellphone service. "And this fake free WiFi - what is this?"

Concert organizers had set up WiFi networks for attendees, but many said they had trouble connecting.

As the crowd swelled Saturday evening to an expected 70,000, users also reported slow connections on cellular data networks.

Some, such as a trio of friends from Richmond, Va., walked away from the crush of the crowd to send photos that had been stalled on their phones.

The demand will be even higher in three weeks when hundreds of thousands of people are expected to flood the Ben Franklin Parkway for Pope Francis' visit for the World Festival of Families and a Sunday Mass.

Telecom providers have installed network enhancements along the Ben Franklin Parkway in recent weeks.

On Friday, Deputy Mayor Everett Gillison said he was eager to see whether the network could handle concertgoers' texts, emails, and posts on Instagram and Twitter.

"Our partnership with AT&T, Verizon, and everyone has really enhanced the capacity in this area in advance of the papal use of the Parkway," he said.

"We're going to actually test and see how much usage we'll get and monitor all that."

Around 9:30 p.m. Saturday, the mayor's communications director, Desiree Peterkin-Bell, said they had seen "no significant WiFi problems."

Users, however, said they were having difficulty finding a signal and when they did, had very slow transmission, if at all.

Saturday afternoon, Mayor Nutter said he had not experienced troubles on his two cellphones, which he said are on two different networks.

For the papal visit, with more people crowding the area, Nutter said, "We know we're going to need more equipment."

For the people having trouble Saturday, Nutter counseled patience: "OK. We're working on it. I mean, it's technology. It's not perfect."

Inquirer staff writer Jack Tomczuk contributed to this article.