Live Nation Entertainment

The challenge

In late last year, intechnologyWiFi were awarded the contract to provide free WiFi at Live Nation Entertainment’s largest summer 2015 festivals (Download, Latitude, Reading and Creamfields). Having already implemented its solution to great success at Download (the UK’s most popular rock and heavy music festival) in June, next in line was Latitude (16–19 July), a more artsy, eclectic festival, going beyond the music to offer performances of theatre, comedy, cabaret, poetry and literature to its attendees, many of whom are families with young children.

Though at a capacity of around 40,000, the Latitude Festival was a smaller, more ‘boutique’ event than Download (~90,000 attendance), it represented the same significant coverage and capacity challenges of other large-scale open events, where high volumes of people in a concentrated area often means traditional forms of connectivity (i.e. mobile/cellular via 3G or 4G) are often insufficient, or even unavailable completely.

For a user, the absence of their familiar, ‘go-to’ means of communication can be uncomfortable and disorientating, particularly at a busy event such as a festival, taking place over a large geographical area. intechnologyWiFi being able to provide a stable, reliable form of connectivity can therefore provide a lifeline for users at such events, particularly in facilitating access to social media networks to locate friends and up to date with the latest goings on around them.

The festival WiFi solution

intechnologyWiFi owns all of its hardware and software and possesses the in-house expertise required to design, install and maintain a seamless public WiFi network from conception to completion, so the installation of the network infrastructure at Latitude (located near Southwold, Suffolk) took place during just seven days prior to the event, led by a dedicated team of 16 highly trained engineers.

Seamless, high-speed free WiFi was provided within the main village area of Latitude’s arena, as well as around the key meeting points on site.

The outcome

(Yorke had also joined Portishead for their set earlier in the evening).

Both Sheeran and Yorke posted cryptic messages on their Twitter feeds earlier in the day of their secret performances, announcing their intentions. The fact that the gigs of both artists ended up being full to capacity, with countless fans being turned away as time went on due to sheer demand, indicates the intechnologyWiFi network played a major role in helping the word of mouth about the gigs be spread (given the poor cellular connectivity available). Indeed, nearly 8000 tweets were shared about the two performances, accounting for over 20% of the total tweets shared during the entire festival.

Natalie Duffield, CEO of IntechnologyWiFi, commented, “With cellular reception (both 3G and 4G) across the Latitude site being intermittent at best, the WiFi connectivity we provided gave fans the ability to log on to social media networks and stay up to date – the attendances at Ed Sheeran and Thom Yorke’s “secret” gigs is testament to this!”

Latitude was another great festival performance by intechnologyWiFi, delivering on our commitment to bring robust, ‘always on’ WiFi coverage to users, even in the most problematic locations for connectivity.