EE's temporary 4G network will cope with 'huge demand' at Glastonbury

[VolumetricFox]

https://www.cable.co.uk/news/ees-temporary-4g-network-will-cope-with-huge-demand-at-glastonbury-700001545/

Quote

This year’s Glastonbury Festival will see the largest and most powerful temporary 4G network at any UK event, according to EE.

The mobile operator, which is tripling the capacity of its 4G network at the Worthy Farm festival, said it expects EE customers to use 15TB of data over the course of the five days.

That’s 20 times as much mobile data as festival-goers used in 2011, the last time Coldplay headlined the festival, and is the equivalent of downloading Adele’s hit single Hello three million times.

EE said the amount of data consumed by festival-goers at Glastonbury has been growing since the launch of 4G and predicted that as much content will be shared using the EE 4G network at the festival as across the whole of Bristol over the same weekend.

Planning for the operator’s temporary 4G network starts nine months before the festival, with high capacity mobile base stations being constructed four weeks before.

To cope with extra demand on data, EE has added a sixth mobile mast this year and tripled the amount of mobile airwaves for customers to use.

Customers will also be able to make calls using the 4G network with EE’s ‘4G Calling’, the company said.

Spencer McHugh, director of brand at EE, said: “People in the UK are using their mobiles more than ever before to share cherished experiences.

'Images and videos'

“2016 has already seen 4G data usage increase by at least 40% at other major events year-on-year and this trend shows no sign of slowing down.

“Each year social media feeds all over the world are flooded with images and videos of Glastonbury Festival so, in anticipation of the huge demand we expect to see at Worthy Farm this June, we’ve tripled our 4G capacity thanks to a number of new innovative network technologies.”

Along with its extra data capacity, EE is offering phone charging and free 4G wi-fi at Glastonbury, as well as the official app as part of its partnership with the festival.

The official Glastonbury 2016 app will be available to download in early June, allowing festival-goers to get news on the weekend’s entertainment and live stream the BBC’s coverage.

The app also allows people to drop location pins over the weekend to make sure they don’t lose their friends, tent or car during the festival

 

[dannygrif]

Interesting. Not that I'll be using data much - if at all - but I'm guessing this only benefits EE customers? 

[Thunderstruck]

I make that about 75mb for each person using 200,000 people to split it up between.

[FrankieX]

Presumably it will also help the virtual networks which use EE masts, such as ASDA Mobile, BT Mobile and Virgin Mobile.

[VolumetricFox]

EE has 33.8% mobile market share

[jumbomcnutt]

Didnt have any issues last year on Vodafone.

[Jsmooth]

so does than mean I'm going to have issues with o2?

[billum]

Just now, nodolphie said:

EE has 33.8% mobile market share

So that becomes about 225MB for each EE customer if there are 67,000 EE customers on site

[somecoolusername]

I'm on EE. But I won't be taking my iphone. With portable chargers and the like more people seem to take their smartphones but I wouldn't assume that everyone on site will take advantage of the data network  

[billum]

Coo, so if that accounts for half the EE customers, that becomes a really-quite-rapacious-nearly-500MB each, 498MB of which are selfies on the Wednesday / Thursday when not much else is on?

[Stretlow]

I'm on three and my network was garbage last year, def getting an EE Sim

[DeanoL]

1 minute ago, Stretlow said:

I'm on three and my network was garbage last year, def getting an EE Sim

Mine was slow but far from unusable. Was able to check email/social networks fine, notifications were coming through. Was faster back at camp of an evening than in the centre.

[gluther]

46 minutes ago, Jsmooth said:

so does than mean I'm going to have issues with o2?

I had virtually no problems with O2 last year so it should be fine again.

[siblin]

Its been pretty good for a few years now, and the temporary base stations have been going for about that long.  The only times I've seen issues in recent years is straight after the headliners.

[billum]

Which is just when you really need it for regrouping!

[Michaels denim shorts]

31 minutes ago, gluther said:

I had virtually no problems with O2 last year so it should be fine again.

I found o2 was fine for mobile signal but data was slower than slow, so was EE a couple of years ago but I'm sure that'll be better this year. Vodafone was pretty useless last year without a stroll to find a bit of signal that seemed to come in with the wind, I found three worked well for Internet in most parts of the sites 

Oddly it varies from year to year with which network does the best. I usually go armed with a bunch of sims & create a wifi hotspot network at camp for the group with whatever seems fastest 

[mr flow]

57 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

Mine was slow but far from unusable. Was able to check email/social networks fine, notifications were coming through. Was faster back at camp of an evening than in the centre.

Same here. I 'm on 3 and had no issues aside from the usual problems you get whilst in the thick of it.

[Jsmooth]

cheers for the updates, doubt I'll need it to much.