Network Slicing takes centre stage at Glastonbury

Overview

• As Glastonbury’s Official Connectivity Partner, Vodafone Business provided a Network Slice of their Glastonbury network coverage to a group of trial vendors at the festival. 

• Network Slicing provides businesses with a dedicated and reliable portion of Vodafone’s network, offering added reassurance for business-critical activities. 

• Using Vodafone’s Network Slice, the vendors ensured they stay online, which increased business and sales efficiency and reduced wait times for festival goers. 

• Festival vendor Ryan Kingsley explains that "the network slice enabled us to maximise our operational efficiency and sales transactions across our bars at The Festival. It provided us with a robust and secure connection, and the confidence that our business would stay online."

The challenge

Glastonbury is widely considered the most iconic music festival in Britain, becoming a true global phenomenon. It’s a staple of the summer festival season, showcasing some of the best musical performers in the world.  

Glastonbury Festival stretches over 900 acres and hosts over 200,000 visitors every year. In fact, an impressive 225 TB of data was sent across the festival in 2024, a 35% increase from last year. 

On top of this, hundreds of vendors depend on a high-quality network connection to facilitate transactions. In an increasingly cashless society, ensuring the capacity for contactless and card payments is very important for them. 

As Glastonbury’s Official Connectivity Partner, Vodafone already provide an incredibly reliable network coverage for the event. However, Vodafone Business wanted to improve enterprise connectivity by providing a dedicated portion of the network to vendors trading at the festival, making the process even more efficient and secure. 

The solution

As The Nation’s Network, Vodafone Business are dedicated to delivering the best possible network experience at popular events like Glastonbury. 

We trialled a new standalone network slicing solution in three bars across the festival. This guaranteed a high-quality network connection to facilitate transactions without compromising the great Glastonbury coverage already provided for festival-goers.  

These bars received access to an exclusive ‘slice’ of Vodafone’s network, allowing them to operate without being affected by the heavy network traffic caused by those attending the event. 

The benefits

Our innovative network slicing solution meant that the three bars were able to maintain a consistent and fast connection for their online payments. The bars saw a 10% increase in cashless transactions compared to 2023, but 100% of transactions were completed without any connectivity-related losses occurring. 

Not only did this maximise their capacity to serve as many customers as possible, but it also reduced wait times for customers, meaning that festival-goers could spend less time queuing for drinks and more time soaking in the joy of the festival.  

The robust connection Vodafone’s slice provided gave vendor Ryan Kingsley “a confidence in the system previously unattainable even with the best traditional network options available.” This newfound confidence also offers future opportunities to reduce costs that are currently needed for backup systems to protect from network downtime.

Business and consumer demand on our network at major events like Glastonbury is increasing around 27% every year. Considering the tremendous success of this network slicing trial, this technology has the potential to completely transform the festival vending experience for both businesses and consumers.

It also clearly demonstrates our dedication to innovation and pushing connectivity at events towards smarter and more efficient network solutions. As Ryan says, "I think the commercial adaptability of network slicing for different businesses is going to be innovative for the industry."