Event connectivity: It is no longer a luxury.

With the possibility of Covid-19 becoming an endemic, large scale events such as festivals, concerts, and sporting events are being planned throughout the world with the hope of running at full capacity. Something that could not have been done over the past two years, due to public health guidance and laws.

For example, the 2022 Commonwealth Games set to be held in Birmingham this July will be operating 286 sessions of sport over 11 days, with thousands of audience members filling stadiums, courts, and arenas. The possibility to run events such as this has great economic value for the host city and country, but there are also significant organisational and logistic challenges.

Connectivity for event goers and its employees is a key deliverable that is often impacted. However, unlike issues with infrastructure or location, connectivity can be improved easily with the installation of a mobile connectivity solution.

Importance of connectivity

Connectivity is essential for the continuous flow and running at any major event, with almost all operations using some sort of wireless connection. This includes:

Keeping employees connected using voice and data
Using business-critical applications on mobile devices
Rapid incident response should an accident happen
Allows mobile POS payments (a key revenue stream at events)

Event marketing also requires fast and reliable connectivity. Events such as Glastonbury, where multiple events are running at the same time, rely on mobile apps to keep attendees up to date on events, indicate traffic at certain locations, and push extra promotions. All of which cannot work without reliable connectivity that can support high volumes of data.

It is evident that connectivity is no longer a luxury, it has become a necessity for event goers as well as operations. With key usage including social media and access to up-to-date information on the event, crowds now expect internet access to be included in the price of their ticket, or, at the very least, a good enough mobile signal to support 4G LTE voice and data.

Strain of full capacity events

Large events lead to large crowds, which unfortunately results in a strain on existing connectivity infrastructure. This issue, which affects the speed and reliability of mobile networks, can have significant impact on event operations, customer satisfaction, and health and safety.

Lowering crowds to meet a network’s capacity would not be feasible and instead event organisers have turned to alternative connectivity solutions to avoid this issue.

Solutions – Mobile Connectivity

As mentioned above, mobile connectivity solutions can be installed to improve the reliability of networks for large crowds and employees. Boost Pro, specifically for large scale events with tens of thousands of simultaneous users, would in most cases recommend a multi-operator Active Distributed Antenna System solution. A small cell solution could be considered for a single network, smaller scale event:

Solution	Costs	Multi-Operator Service Quality	Capacity	Cabling and backhaul	Time
Small Cell	Low cost	Supports 3G/ 4G for O2, EE, and Three	Up to 400,000 sq ft	Standard Cat5e or Cat6 cabling using fully shared IP and backhaul	6-12 weeks to deploy
Active DAS	Higher cost (by comparison)	Supports 3G/4G/5G for all operators	>500,000 sq ft	Requires Cat6A shielded cabling with a dedicated backhaul per operator base station	6+ months to deploy