I am one of the 240,000 people with free tickets attending President-elect Barack Obama’s swearing-in ceremony on the steps of the U.S. Capitol next week. And like the other 2 million or so people descending upon Washington, D.C., this weekend for the festivities, I am counting on my cell phone to not only keep me informed of important traffic alerts and happenings around the nation’s capital but also to help me meet up with many friends and family I plan to see while in town.

The last presidential inauguration I attended was back in 1993 when Bill Clinton had just taken office. Back then I didn’t even know anyone who owned a cell phone. I had to make plans ahead of time, if you can believe that, to make sure I could meet my sister, who had my ticket.

Nowadays, nobody makes plans ahead of time. Instead, we rely on our cell phones to allow us to plan on the fly. I have already exchanged cell phone numbers with at least six different “friends” on Facebook to meet up this weekend. I don’t have solid plans with any one of these people. So I am simply crossing my fingers that the cell phone network holds up.

Just to put things in perspective, four years ago just over 200,000 people showed up for George W. Bush’s inauguration. About 1 million people were in Times Square in New York City on December 31, 2008, to watch the ball drop. The only other crowd of this size that has assembled in recent times is the yearly Muslim pilgrimage, or Hajj, to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, which this year topped out at between 2 million and 3 million visitors.

While cell phone carriers are constantly upgrading capacity in their networks and have routinely prepared for major events in Washington, D.C., such as inaugurations and state funerals, this will likely be the largest gathering of Americans in one place at one time. And given that most of the 2 million people expected to be in D.C. will be carrying a cell phone, it will certainly put a strain on the network, especially if everyone decides to call, text, Twitter, update Facebook pages, watch live video, or send video clips to friends and family at the same time.

What could make cell phone networks particularly vulnerable this year is the proliferation of new smartphones, like Apple’s iPhone or the various Research In Motion BlackBerry phones, that use 2G and 3G networks to access the Web and provide data services.

“We can only bend the laws of physics so much,” said Joe Farren, a spokesman for the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA). “If there are 4 million people on the mall streaming video, sending pictures, or calling, there could be congestion.”

And network congestion means that cell phone users might experience, dropped calls and delayed text messages. Smartphone users, like me with my Apple iPhone, might also see mobile Web pages load excruciatingly slow or not at all. And for people with video services like Verizon’s VCast, Sprint TV, or MobiTV, watching live video of news broadcasts while standing thousands of people deep in the crowd may be impossible.

Best to text instead of talk
The CTIA is advising people to text and not talk. Text messages and e-mails travel through the network much more easily than voice calls, especially during peak traffic times. Users should also snap, and save, and send photos later. Sending pictures via the cell network eats up valuable capacity, so CTIA suggests sharing those special moments later. And finally, the trade group advises all people to have a back-up plan. Think old school, and pick a rendezvous place and time to meet friends and family in case the cell network is so clogged you can’t communicate.

That said, the big four wireless operators–AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel, and T-Mobile USA–say they’ve spent millions of dollars and months of time increasing capacity on their networks to ensure that their customers have a good experience throughout the inauguration weekend.

Each carrier has deployed Cell On Wheels throughout the city where cell phone usage is expected to be high. And each carrier has already deployed at least one Cell On Light Truck right near the Capitol, where Obama will take the oath of office as the 44th president of the U.S., to boost capacity. These mobile units use satellite and microwave technology to increase