Phone Signal

[Yetteh]

Hello Guys and Girls,

 

This will be my first Glastonbury festival or festival ever, as you may imagine I rather nervous and excited. My group of friends are all heading down on Wednesday morning yet due to work I cannot join them until Thursday evening after 6PM.

 

I plan to head to the "Drop off zone" which I believe is where the Bath and West show grounds are, at this point my friends have told me to ring them when I get on the bus and they will meet me by the gate. The only thing which worries me is I hear horror stories about the "Phone Signal" at Glastonbury, however from others they say they never had a problem.

 

The worse case scenario for me is I cannot ring my friends and thus-for have no idea where the hell to go or what to do after I go through the gate, I fear I won't be able to find my friends and with no phone signal I don't even have a way to get back home if I needed to.

 

Can anyone shed some light or advice on this, on a Thursday Evening between 6 - 8PM is there likely going to be Phone Signal so I can call my friends? I plan on taking two phones on different networks to avoid this disaster.

 

[Slugworth]

Im sure you'll be ok. Never had any issues myself making calls. Sending data however is a different story on occasions.

Last year they installed wifi hotspots disguised as cows. Didn't try to connect to one so couldnt say how reliable they were.

 

Hope you have a great time!! I already know you will.

[johnmcga]

Mobile phone reliability has vastly improved in recent years. I was on O2 last year and had no problem making / receiving calls when required.

 

Me and my girlfriend usually arrive at different times, so we arrange a backup meeting place and time just in case things go horrifically wrong and we can't coordinate via our phones. (The meeting point can be a good place, or you can choose anywhere that's easy to find and hard to get confused with other spots!) 

[Migraine]

You should be fine but why not sort a backup plan out. If they haven't heard from you by say 9pm you could arrange to meet them at the meeting point for instance. Once you get on site the stewards would be able to point you in the right direction and it will also be marked on the map.

[wetflame]

The general rule of thumb is that calls and texts are usually fine, any sort of 3G is massively unreliable. Best bet though is to have a "if all else fails meet here at this time" plan as Migraine suggests. 

[robin]

Will probably be fine on the Thursday evening. Things will stop working reliably once there are acts on the main stages and loads more people are sending texts and trying to make calls to tell their mates which peace flag they are sat beside all at the same time, or where in the queue they are for getting into the south east corner. Then calls may not work and texts may take a day to arrive. 

 

Text will generally be more reliable though, and less prone to you miss hearing what the other person is saying on a call.

[HurrahBrother]

Busy site, lots of users, limited stations/portals, there will be congestion. 

 

As Robin says. texts tend to be more reliable than phone calls. Also due a ton of ambient background noise, more usable anyway. 

 

3g/4g internet will vary wildly. 

Edited June 19, 2015 by HurrahBrother

[chief_scrutter]

As Robin says. texts tend to be more reliable than phone calls. Also due a ton of ambient background noise, more usable anyway. 

i'd actually disagree - the text might leave your phone okay, but no guarantee when it will hit the recipients phone, let alone when/if they'll look at it. with a phone call it might take a couple of dropped connections but you know whether or not it has worked

[robin]

i'd actually disagree - the text might leave your phone okay, but no guarantee when it will hit the recipients phone, let alone when/if they'll look at it. with a phone call it might take a couple of dropped connections but you know whether or not it has worked

If found that it only seems to be overnight that the texts get seriously delayed. Guess there is just a surge of people sending "OMG SE CRN AMZNG!1!1!" and "WR R U" texts during the hours of darkness.

 

During the daytime I've never had a problem with texts getting through reliably, and also the person at the other end noticing within a reasonable time that their phone beeped at them.