Festival-goers used 25TB of 4G data whilst visiting Worthy Farm, up 130pc year-on-year
Glastonbury is now the “best connected festival” in the world, with festival-goers using 25TB of 4G at the festival this year, according to EE.
The operator, which has sponsored Glastonbury for the last four years, said data use on its network was up 130 per cent on 2015, and 70 per cent more than predicted.
A fifth of the data recorded was used uploaded, the equivalent of 22 million selfies, EE claimed.
To cope with the 170,000 visitors who descended on Worthy Farm for the wet and muddy weekend between June 22 and 27, EE set up what it claims is the world’s most powerful temporary 4G network.
This network had triple the capacity of the network set up for the previous year, with traffic peaking during the EU referendum announcement on June 24, and during Coldplay’s headlining performance on the Friday night. Network small cell solutions were hidden as hedges and cows (pictured, right).
EE communications director Mat Sears said: “We have seen data usage vastly increase at all major events year after year and knew that Glastonbury would be no exception. This is undoubtedly the biggest event in the UK music calendar and festival-goers want to share every epic moment.
“25 terabytes is an extraordinary amount of data for our network to carry over five days – that‘s a lot of selfies – but by tripling capacity of our 4G network this year we were more than prepared.”
EE also provided phone charging facilities, using Juice charging bars, and a virtual reality experience, which highlighted a number of the festival’s key moments through a VR headset.
