London,
29
June
2016
|
23:00
Europe/London

Glastonbury claims title of world's most connected festival

  • Glastonbury - using EE 3
  • Glastonbury - VR headset
  • Glastonbury - using EE 2
  • Glastonbury - using EE
  • Glastonbury - Juice Tube Power Bank
  • Glastonbury - VR camera
  • Glastonbury - VR camera 2
  • Festival-goers used a whopping 25 terabytes of data via EE’s powerful 4G network at Glastonbury – 70 per cent (10 terabytes) more than was predicted
  • A triple capacity 4G network from EE was in place to cope with unprecedented demand for data as revellers took to social media to share their favourite festival moments
  • EE’s superfast network was at its busiest when the outcome of the EU referendum was announced and when headliner Coldplay took to the Pyramid Stage on Sunday night
  • The official Glastonbury app from EE was accessed nearly four million times during the festival
  • EE celebrated Glastonbury by capturing the festival’s first ever Virtual Reality content this year, filmed and edited live on site – view/share/embed the content here –https://youtu.be/ZkDB2pAmtXM

This year’s Glastonbury can claim the title of the world’s most connected music festival as EE, official technology and communications partner, reveals festival-goers used a whopping 25 terabytes of data over the five day event. Up 130 per cent on last year’s data usage, this mind-blowing amount of data is equivalent to downloading Coldplay’s hit track Hymn For The Weekend six million times. Five terabytes of the data consumed was used for uploading content – the equivalent of sharing 22 million festival selfies.

EE installed the world’s largest and most powerful temporary 4G network on site with triple the capacity of 2015 to cope with the unprecedented demand and saw activity peak during Friday morning’s referendum announcement and when Coldplay headlined the Pyramid stage.

Mat Sears, Communications Director at EE 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 services on site to keep people connected and created the official app as well as a technology first for the event: a Glastonbury Festival Virtual Reality experience.

This unique Virtual Reality content was filmed, edited and shown to revellers on site in the EE Recharge tent so they could virtually explore even more of Glastonbury’s vast site while waiting for their phones to charge. Capturing a variety of festival moments, from a stunning sunset over the Other Stage and knife throwing in the Circus Field to the weird and wonderful nightlife of Arcadia and Shangri-La, the VR experience was also made available in EE’s flagship London Westfield White City store over the weekend for those who had missed out on a ticket. The VR video can now be viewed across EE social media channels.

The official Glastonbury app from EE also proved more popular than ever and was accessed over four million times during the festival as those on site dropped nearly 40,000 map location pins, favourited over three million acts and listened to nearly half a million Deezer clips of their favourite artists.

For more information on EE’s partnership with the Glastonbury Festival, please visit ee.co.uk/Glastonbury.

- ENDS -

For more information, please contact the EE press team:

M&C Saatchi PR / eeglasto@mcsaatchi.com / 0207 544 3600

About EE

EE, part of BT Group, is the largest and most advanced mobile communications company in Britain, delivering mobile and fixed communications services to consumers.

EE runs the UK's biggest and fastest mobile network, having pioneered the UK's first superfast 4G mobile service in October 2012 and is the first European operator to surpass 15 million 4G customers. EE's 4G coverage today reaches more than 96% of the UK population, equal to more than 60% of the UK geography. EE plans to extend 4G to 95% geographic coverage by 2020, further than any UK network has ever taken mobile overage.

In the last few years, EE has received extensive independent recognition, including being ranked the UK's best overall network by RootMetrics®; Best Network at the 2014 and 2015 Mobile News Awards; Best Consumer Network at the 2014 & 2015 Mobile Industry Awards; Best Network at the 2014 & 2015 Mobile Choice Consumer Awards, and Best Network at the What Mobile Awards 2014; Fastest Network at the 2014 and 2016 uSwitch Mobile Awards; Best Mobile Network at the 2014 Recombu Awards, and Winners of Best Connected Gadget at the Mobile Choice Consumer Awards 2015.

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