However, this year's U2 Elevation tour has a behind-the-scenes organisation, supporting constant access to shared Internet and printer networks that has never been seen before. Thanks to Toshiba's wireless Wi-Fi™ hardware technology, the U2 worldwide tour marks the first time a music group is supporting its mobile office needs wirelessly, making set up and break down fast, easy and cable-free.

In order to understand the amount of complex and endless details that are involved in coordinating the tour, you must first have an idea of how many folks are involved in the logistics to pull off an event of this magnitude. Approximately 100 people are employed by the tour, and 25 of them work in a mobile "office" environment.

So how does it all come together? The four core teams that create and manage the tour are:

Principle Management

This group includes the band's personal manager and assistants that handle publicity and overall artist development. This organisation manages the band year-round, even when they are not on tour.

Tour Production

Also known as "roadies", they set-up and tear down the tour's equipment and are responsible for designing, constructing and transporting the equipment between shows. They erect the overall set, stage, sound and lighting at each performance.

Clear Channel Entertainment

This company is the promoter and financial backer of the tour. They are a multi-billion dollar business that owns and manages venues and promotes most of the musical talent on the road today, incl. Britney Spears, Ricky Martin, Santana and the Rolling Stones.

U2 Tour Management

This team, many of whom have toured with the band since their inception, is responsible for budgeting, transportation, food, lodging and the itinerary for the band and staff before and after each performance. The tour manager heads up this team.

As with any business, communication within these groups is essential to the tour's success. Prior to using the Wi-Fi™ wireless products, these four groups were not networked. Each person had their own personal printer and communicated via Internet providers, phone and fax with the "outside world" and with each other. However, besides being inconvenient and having multiple printers to support, the old set up allowed the tour team access to their email/Internet only via a modem.

This created a major power struggle over the use of the phone lines and limited communications capabilities according to Craig Sneiderman, the tour's production accountant and IT manager. "Everyone would hog the phone lines to check their email once we arrived at a new venue," he said. "It was a constant battle between who and what was more important — someone's phone call or someone checking their email."

But now all that has changed. With the use of Toshiba's Tecra® 8200 and Tecra® 8100 notebooks, Wi-Fi™ access point, Wi-Fi™ PC Cards and the Magnia® appliance server, Sneiderman was able to create a wireless local area network that everyone could access. Any notebook within range of the Magnia® is online and networked. The teams now share files, use the phone lines for phone calls, access the Internet and email simultaneously, and it's all done wirelessly. Additionally, they have reduced their number of printers to two, both of which are shared by everyone on the network. This results in lower truck space requirements and cost.

Sneiderman says, "Wireless is huge. On a tour like this, communication is one of your biggest hurdles. Each person averages 40-60 emails a day communicating with friends, families, businesses and celebrities. Time is of the essence. The biggest advantage for us is to have shared access to the Internet and printers at every location."

In addition, Sneiderman has also found the use of Toshiba's 2GB, 1.8-inch PC Card Hard Disk Drive (HDD) particularly useful. Because he is responsible for tracking the revenue at each show, the data and accounting figures that are on his computer are extremely valuable and confidential. He uses the PC Card HDD to back-up his computer files and even carries it in his pocket while travelling. "The PC Card HDD has been great. Before, if my computer was lost or damaged I had no way to protect my files, and now I do, which is a big relief."

If you ask Sneiderman, "What would you do if you were to lose all this technology tomorrow?" He says frankly, "If you take it away we're going to get by. But we're going to have our phones unplugged and printers everywhere. Once you give somebody something like this, you've got to be prepared to give it to them again."