Web Summit will leave Ireland warns Cosgrave

Web Summit founder Paddy Cosgrave has warned the technology conference may move elsewhere unless the RDS can sort out its wifi issues.

In an address from the Centre Stage this afternoon he said old-school attitudes are holding back Ireland.

“Old dudes hold this country back,” he said, adding that he was looking forward to a time when he could ask if anyone in an audience has wifi problems and see no hands go up.

Cosgrave called on the RDS to fix the issues by allowing the Web Summit to use an external provider like Cisco. "Otherwise we won't be in this country much longer," he said.

Cosgrave said he met with RDS chief executive Michael Duffy yesterday to discuss the problem with the wifi access. He said Mr Duffy was open to someone like Cisco coming in to provide the service but was non-commital. Cosgrave apologised to attendees for the lack of wifi in the Centre Stage area “for a third day in a row”.

Michael Duffy of the RDS responded saying: “The Web Summit is an entirely unique technology event, and as with any technology event of this scale, does present certain unique challenges, due to the large numbers in attendance and the unprecedented demands on the Wi-Fi and network systems, aligned to extremely high volumes of devices concurrently accessing the network”.

“Moving forward, the organisers of the Web Summit and ourselves will work in close partnership to ensure that this remains the world class technology event that it has become,” he added.

Speakin on RTE's Morning Ireland on Friday Mr Duffy said he was confident that the wifi issues would be dealt with and that the Summit will be back in Dublin next year.