Vodafone

[Chef]

I'm on O2 and may as well have left my phone at home - completely useless apart from when standing next to the Vodaphone recharge tent or the mobile mast next to the Woodsies toilets where I would get a full 5G signal.

Others in my group on VF and EE had great coverage everywhere the whole weekend even in big crowds at Pyramid etc. 

[ukmountie]

I'm primarily on Three and surprisingly it was really good for me this year. I had a EE sim which I used last year, and a sim from Talkmobile which use Vodaphone. Didn't feel the need to switch SIMS. This is compared to last year where Three was OK on Wednesday and terrible after that so I switched SIMs to EE.

The only glitch I got was on Monday morning in campervans. It went from being mostly fine to totally unusable. So pronounced that I can only guess something got turned off on Monday. No biggie as I switched to Vodaphone, but odd.

I do wonder how much improvement is due to 5g. The big win is supposedly improved beam-forming so you can service more devices more quickly with the same RF bandwidth. Most of the towers I saw appeared to be 5g.

To be clear, I'm not someone who needs to post everything I do online, but I do have two young daughters who want to talk to me several times a day. Worked great for that. 

[chazwwe]

I'm on EE. Have been fine during the festival before. This year was awful. I would get some signal post 11pm. But anything between lunch time at headliner time was nothing, texts not going through, what's app arriving late/sending late and sometimes in the wrong order. Made it really difficult to meet up with people. 

[Alvoram]

I am on Three, and I have a second EE e-sim in my phone. 

I chose to leave my Three sim at home and picked up a vodafone PAYG sim. 

Needn't have bothered, EE was flawless, I got 5G everywhere at all times*. And my friends Three sim worked too, albeit with a few data blackout spots / moments. 

The only exception being Monday morning, also close to campervan fields, where all networks seemed to completely drop... I'm guessing they turned off the temporary masts in that area on Monday morning, as everybody seemed to suddenly lose connection. Not ideal given the amount of time spent waiting in traffic to get off site from that end. 

Edited July 6, 2023 by Alvoram

[thewomble]

2 hours ago, Chef said:

I'm on O2 and may as well have left my phone at home - completely useless apart from when standing next to the Vodaphone recharge tent or the mobile mast next to the Woodsies toilets where I would get a full 5G signal.

Others in my group on VF and EE had great coverage everywhere the whole weekend even in big crowds at Pyramid etc. 

I'm on O2 and didn't find it too bad. I got pretty good signal at the pyramid stage, managed to get 5G in a few places to check secret set rumours and get the odd WhatsApp. Texting and phone calls I found was totally fine 

[clarkete]

10 hours ago, Chimps said:

What’s people’s thoughts on the Vodafone signal this year. 

No issues as a punter for 6 days.  Maybe a slight pause when in hugely congested stages, but everything worked and data rate faster than anything I've seen in twenty years. 

[Pinhead]

The o2 signal was ok but suspected it was external to site and not relayed by temp standup basestations. Slots were the issue rather than signal, again consitent with external masts - was better up the hill.

[mungo57]

The Lebara cheap sim I got from another thread on here worked fine. Very quick page loads when I needed to and also texts and calls went through with ease. At least they didn’t throttle back the networks that piggyback off their master network.

 

in the CV fields and on the Wednesday I had good 3 signal but it changed quickly come Wednesday evening so I just swapped sims.

[incident]

My experience on Voda (or to be more exact, TalkMobile), was infinitely better than previous years. Good quality service 95% of the time. The only issue I saw was in the Pyramid field when it was exceptionally busy, ie around the Elton set.

[clarkete]

17 minutes ago, incident said:

The only issue I saw was in the Pyramid field when it was exceptionally busy, ie around the Elton set.

Same. There seemed to be a transmitter between cv e24 and E25, not sure how many more there are. 

[philipsteak]

Yeah. Vodafone were fine all through.One friend (O2 i think) was only reachable by SMS at times but she was the only one.

I did end up switching off 5G as it seemed to be doing horrible things to my battery and 4G was just as fast.

[Watergirl]

I am on Vodaphone. Worked a treat.

[cerv]

Am on EE and I would lose signal every night around headliner time, for both data and regular network texts. Very frustrating when trying to co-ordinate meet ups last minute.

Sounds like some others on EE were OK. Maybe it was a 4G vs 5G thing as my phone is 4G only. Or might have just been first come first served and I missed out but it kept happening throughout the festival.

[stephos83]

Am on Smarty (so Three). After last year was dreading it, but I had excellent service across the weekend and could use my phone pretty much as normal, even in the middle of the Elton crowd!

[goonerben]

I am on O2, which was useless both last year and this year.

So I converted my normal SIM to an eSIM, and got an additional Vodafone pay as you go SIM for the festival.  Used Vodafone for mobile data, which covers WhatsApp and all the socials etc.

In the middle of the festival site, I had pretty much uninterrupted coverage.  Was a bit patchy in Sticklinch during the mornings (when everybody was there) - but I was on babysiting duty on Friday night, and watched the entire Arctic Monkeys set on iPlayer from the campsite, on uninterrupted 4G.

O2 contract is up for renewal at the end of the year - don't get much value from O2 priority (which was the reason for joining them in the first place), so think I will defect...

[ICGenie]

I gave up on O2 (via Virgin) halfway through Thursday. It was consistently telling me I had 4G but doing nothing. Got a free Vodafone SIM. Was impressed I didn't have to sign up to anything at all for it. Yes, meant I lost my number for the weekend but that was no great hardship.

[Alvoram]

On 7/7/2023 at 9:13 AM, cerv said:

Am on EE and I would lose signal every night around headliner time, for both data and regular network texts. Very frustrating when trying to co-ordinate meet ups last minute.

Sounds like some others on EE were OK. Maybe it was a 4G vs 5G thing as my phone is 4G only. Or might have just been first come first served and I missed out but it kept happening throughout the festival.

I think you're right with this, my phone is set to always prefer 5g, and I had no issues. I think, though I don't really know for sure, 5G offers much higher capacity for coping with things like dense crowds. 

But the same applies for Vodafone and EE, both were faultless throughout the festival on 5G. Except when, I guess, they turned the masts off in the campervan fields on Monday morning. 

[dumski]

On 7/7/2023 at 8:37 AM, Watergirl said:

I am on Vodaphone. Worked a treat.

I second this 

[Dave_c]

On 7/6/2023 at 11:51 AM, thewomble said:

I'm on O2 and didn't find it too bad. I got pretty good signal at the pyramid stage, managed to get 5G in a few places to check secret set rumours and get the odd WhatsApp. Texting and phone calls I found was totally fine 

Yeah text and phone was ok on O2 but data was patchy on site and any I did get was painfully slow.  Signal was non existent in Worthy View (as it was last year)

[antonylast]

On 7/6/2023 at 9:20 AM, Chef said:

I'm on O2 and may as well have left my phone at home...

O2 worked perfectly from waking up until about 8am wherever I was on site, but agree that it was terrible any other time - appreciate we're not there to be glued to a handset, but incredibly frustrating when trying to coordinate plans!

Edit: as mentioned above, calls worked without any issues...just not great when near a speaker... 🙂

Edited July 9, 2023 by antonylast

[idb]

On 7/6/2023 at 10:43 PM, mungo57 said:

The Lebara cheap sim I got from another thread on here worked fine. Very quick page loads when I needed to and also texts and calls went through with ease. At least they didn’t throttle back the networks that piggyback off their master network.

We also did this. It worked fine all festival. Cancelling it once we returned home.

[GoonerRob]

Im on three and it was fantastic. I was so impressed i even did a few speed tests as i couldnt believe it. Was pulling down 300-400Mb/s on 5G. Insane.

Only issues were when 5G wasnt available (4G was just shite).

My mate on o2 might as well have left his phone at home.

[Skip997]

5 minutes ago, GoonerRob said:

Im on three and it was fantastic.

I've been on 3 last two festivals.

Making/receiving calls is fine. Receiving texts is fine, sending texts - no.

Don't bother with internet after Tuesday.

[GoonerRob]

1 minute ago, Skip997 said:

I've been on 3 last two festivals.

Making/receiving calls is fine. Receiving texts is fine, sending texts - no.

Don't bother with internet after Tuesday.

Last year was shockingly bad, this year was awesome. not sure what changed.

I rarely use SMS, we managed to co-ordinate via whatsapp easily tho

[DareToDibble]

On 7/6/2023 at 10:43 PM, mungo57 said:

The Lebara cheap sim I got from another thread on here worked fine. Very quick page loads when I needed to and also texts and calls went through with ease. At least they didn’t throttle back the networks that piggyback off their master network.

Exactly the same for me. Lebara worked great all weekend. o2 was fairly useless other than making calls and even that struggled at times.

Lebara was actually that good that my friends tethered off me a couple of times.