25 Apr 2019

EE to trial 5G at Glastonbury Festival

EE, Glastonbury Festival’s technology partner for the sixth year, will trial 5G at the event, installing five temporary masts across the Worthy Farm site and these will broadcast 2G, 3G, 4G, along with 5G for the first time.

While 5G-capable devices will be able to connect to EE’s on-site 5G network (EE is looking to launch its commercial network alongside five 5G smartphones, a 5G customer-premises equipment – CPE – device and a 5G hotspot device), it will be mostly used to provide users of non-5G capable devices with additional bandwidth via 5G CPEs, which will provide connectivity via Wi-Fi and use 5G for backhaul, and these will be centred around the EE Recharge Tent, which as before will provide festival-goers with free access to wireless and USB C charging stations. Each CPE will be able to serve around 30 users at once, so during the festival a few hundred people will be able to connect to 5G at a time via the 5G CPEs.

Around 40 MHz of spectrum will be used for 5G New Radio (non-standalone), compared to 70MHz for LTE and 20MHz of 3G. The operator is looking to provide 5G coverage to about half of the festival’s area.