EE seem confident in the abilities of their 4G network at Glastonbury this year, based on their twitter comments:

"We have masts up all over the place at Glastonbury, you should be getting a full speed 4G signal there."

"The Glastonbury site has a terrific signal as we have a lot of temporary masts up at the moment."

I'd be interested to hear from anyone on-site to see if the 4G data network holds up.

3G has technology limitations that mean it simply cannot cope with high numbers of people, regardless of how many base stations you put in (so forget about calling anyone), but 4G LTE should be much better at handling the crowds.

I know people should switch off their phones and just enjoy the music (I agree!) but I'm interested to see if we will ever get to the point where 4G can handle large crowds at big events without falling flat on it's face.

I downloaded the Glastonbury app to see what it was like.
Got a notification just now that said "Please don't pee in the river, it's killing the wildlife"
Hahahahaha

Didn't the environment agency threaten to close them down if people did that? There's been a big campaign to stop people doing it.

The Campsite is never covered properly as the temp masts literally only have range of a few hundred meters and are based around the main area, so the campsite will be EE Wifi or 3G only.

They have 1800 & 2600 CA deployed.

Yeah I think so. I didn't' get a screen grab of the message but it mentioned something along those lines.

You would have thought by now that they would have populated the surrounding area with proper masts and 4Ged them.
Networks never seem to prioritise areas where many people gather.
They seem to have as much common sense and the Greek Government!

Surely it's simple economics. Will the revenue collected from a weekend's worth of calls, texts, and data at the site, cover the cost of providing the service ?

With many (most ?) on fixed price contracts, where's the incentive to provide proper coverage ?

2 things though..

Number 1, will the locals and the planners permit populating the surrounding area with lots of extra masts, they have to live there all year round

Number 2, is it worth it for the few days a year, all those masts sitting there doing nothing 360 days a year

People don't choose networks based on coverage for 1 event, usually they are more concerned about home, work and commuting coverage and the area is farm land normally, not home, work or commuting.

The other thing is as long as basic social networking works I think most people will be socialising and watching the entertainment, not watching House of Cards in HD, so they'll have little need for fast speeds. If I were going I might not even take my Smartphone so it doesn't get soaked, muddy or stolen, I'd probably take a £10 cheapo and enjoy the entertainment and company.

Well ok, I didn't really mean loads of masts. I just meant get good coverage in that area in the first place. 3G is good there I think so why wasn't that area 4Ged ages ago like 2013?
I mean just make sure the masts are fibred and get some 2600 there too.
It looks like the area could be covered by a single mast. Just get full 1800 and 2600 frequency allocation there and that would go a long way to sorting it.

Oh I had visions of you wanting something like this https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...adio_masts.jpg

Yeah well then we'd have to take our phones just to take pictures of it or possibly I'm just speaking for myself here? Hahahahahaha

No, its bigger than that.
Say youre a regular at the location.
EE dont offer coverage but others do, then when deciding who to renew youre contract with, that could come into play.
Sometimes companies have to take a hit on some things to make money n the rest of it.
So a great marketing ploy by EE would be we offer Glastonbury coverage but others dont.
They may make a loss on the weekend, but the bigger picture = PROFIT.

I know people that have been going for years to Glastonbury, but as you say one event may not swing it,
But if that one event was the deciding factor, eg great coverage at home and out and about plus major events then that will swing people.
if youre spending the money on these events, youre not taking the price of youre mobile into account.

it must be easy enough for mobile companies to set up temp mast at events, so not needing planning permission?

I doubt people would even remember or consider it when changing networks.

A huge number of people don't even look into coverage at all apart from at home. Marketing, the offer on the phone they want, who their family and close friends are with and price would all probably be in their mind, not the coverage at the festival they were at 6 months ago, not knowing that changing would make any difference or that any 1 network would be better than another.

Most people don't know there are coverage checkers.
They just go for the best offer and then ask me "How come I get the internet at home but not outside" etc etc..

Oh and then there's the issue of most people not even knowing what 2G, 3G , 4G means.

Mine is a frustrating life!!!!

I know the feeling Devon, spoke to someone this weekend who was convinced Vodafone were switching 3g masts of at night in rural areas as they refuse to pay the rent to farmers... Or blame there phone and convinced it has a fault as they should have full signal! Pointing at the Sutton Coldfield TV transmitter in the distance...
Another good one is 'I'm on a 4g plan now with O2/Vodafone/EE (or whoever)' proudly displaying the full signal on there phone... You trying to maintain the fake impressed faced as you notice it got a big G or E next to it.


O2/Vodafone have a few sites like this already... 2g only of course

I've given up explaining such things to people now, they just give a blank look. Google is their friend...

My boss is still convinced vodafone offer "the best signal in the country.." usually right after complaining his phone hasn't got a signal so he can't make a call.

We just had a serious issue switching from Vodafone to O2 because the North west regional control centre had crap O2 coverage. Vodafone built the mast right next to the place and EE may have had a commercial microcell not sure if they do them. Vodafone are crap on data but they have great 2g coverage. We use Airwave for crucial stuff but we've got very few groups so we use phones a lot.

Just got back from Glasto. All the networks had 4g (except Three). I used a PAYG EE sim, data was pretty good and generally worked even at peak times. Although bizarrely there were times when friends using o2 3g had quicker service than ee 4g. Maybe ee's capacity was spread more thinly as they had to share it with the internet cafe/wifi cow they promoted?

I am on Three and I even got one of the 100gb EE SIMs ready for Glastonbury and even topped up with £10 to activate it, but did not bother in the end as the places we went my friends EE phone seemed worse than mine (still on Three) where mine at least had VERY slow download speeds, but his was not downloading at all. My other friend on O2 on an old legacy 3G plan had hardly any problems at all - could it be that if people are bothered about data speeds that much they are not on O2 and if they are they are not that bothered enough to risk taking their smartphone (bung the SIM in a cheap Nokia)?

It was crazy on the way home as I was trying to upload videos etc and it was not working and found the download speed was well over 10meg, but the upload speed was around. 2meg (I guess everyone and their mother was uploading whilst they were stuck in traffic trying to get away from Glastonbury).

I think it is safe to say seeing the Carphone Warehouses principle advert on the radio just now is that they can show you coverage at your work/home before you decide.... shows there is a lack of knowledge.

By the download/upload amounts EE are reporting it seems EE did quite well.



http://ee.co.uk/our-company/newsroom...tsrc=Affiliate

Ummm, packet inspection of individuals' data connections, I thought that was GCHQ's game, not your mobile provider ?

Ummm, you don't need packet inspection to measure volumes of data. This is recorded as a standard performance measure for each cell so they will have simply added up the volumes from this.

So how did they come up with this statement ?

"..around four million envy-inducing posts to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter feeds from the Festival."