Ask HN: Wireless at Conferences: Problems, Solutions?

I am interested in building an application for conferences which requires real time collaboration. The problem is conference wifi can be incredibly spotty, which means the application's usefulness is potentially nil depending on the quality of the conference wifi.

I am not a wireless engineer, but am trying to understand the problems that typically occur with conference wifi, and hopefully some potential solutions. Do any businesses out there work specifically to provide reliable wifi for conferences? When are we going to see three to five-hundred people be able to connect reliably to conference wifi without any hiccups?