No North–South divide when it comes to festival WiFI
Seamless, free WiFi networks at two of the UK’s largest festivals taking place over the August Bank Holiday weekend (Reading and Creamfields) will benefit nearly 170,000 attendees
25th August 2015: London, UK: In spite of well-trodden talk of socio-economic and cultural disparity between the north and south of the UK, at least the availability and quality of free festival WIFi will be bucking the trend on August Bank Holiday weekend.
Two of the UK’s largest music festivals (Reading and Creamfields), at opposite ends of the country, as well as the scale of musical genres, will take place 28–31 August, both offering their attendees high-speed, wireless internet at the push of a button.
Creamfields, taking place in Daresbury, Cheshire, is the UK’s biggest dance festival, with an attendance of 80,000, while Reading, taking place just outside the large Berkshire town of the same name, has been the defining festival for fans of rock, alternative and indie music since the late 1980s, with a regular attendance of nearly 90,000.
The free WiFi at both festivals will be provided by intechnologyWiFi, who have significant expertise in providing blanket free wireless coverage to areas with high volumes of people (such as music festivals and stadiums, as well as busy town and city centres) without restrictions on time or bandwidth.
intechnologyWiFI have already provided free WiFi to the Latitude and Download festivals earlier this summer. At Download, over 90,000 fans took advantage of the seamless ‘always on’ coverage to blitz through over 2 terabytes of (TB) of data – the equivalent of 11 million photos, 200,000 high quality videos, or over 25 million tweets shared.
Social media driving necessity for robust connectivity
With increasing numbers of fans demanding to connect immediately, in real-time, with the wider world while attending an event by posting updates, photos and videos to Facebook, Twitter and the like, it is critical the connectivity exists to allow them to do so.
However, the issue faced by event organisers is that common connectivity infrastructure – such as 3G – simply isn’t up to the challenge in the environments highly concentrated with mobile users. While 4G offers improved connectivity, users are likely to encounter exactly the same problems when trying to connect, as the number of users continues to increase.
Glen Littlewood, Marketing Director of Live Nation UK – which manages Creamfields and Reading – said: ‘Live Nation and Cream are delighted to have intechnologyWiFi on board for two of our flagship festivals. Ensuring that those attending these events have fast, efficient, ‘always on’ WiFi coverage is central to creating unrivalled fan experiences that look to benefit our customers, allowing fans to engage seamlessly on digital channels.
About intechnologyWiFi
intechnologyWiFi is part of Intechnology plc and is owned by Peter Wilkinson, one of the UK’s most successful technology entrepreneurs, with a proven track record of delivering profitable, free technical solutions, including the first free consumer internet service, Freeserve.
In a market flooded with providers of free, public WiFi, intechnologyWiFi is the only company with the financial power, technical expertise and resources to deliver a complete, end-to-end network and content solution for festivals and events, stadiums, and towns and cities.
intechnologyWiFi owns its hardware and software, and possess the in-house expertise required to design, install and maintain a seamless public WiFi network at a festival, from conception to completion – totally free for users.
