Carfest South 2015
This is a massive influx of vehicles and people to a small rural area in North Hampshire over the course of this August Bank Holiday weekend. Carfest (www.carfest.org) is part of BBC Children in Need and is hosted at our local farmer producer, ex racing driver Jody Scheckter's Laverstoke Park Farm in Overton.
Before you ask, it has rained a lot here in Overton this week. There has been some flooding on the roads and the state of the fields is not just wet: It's sodden.
Chris Evans' Breakfast Show on BBC Radio 2 this morning stated that the organisers have laid two miles of temporary road on the site and that the ground is well and truly churned up into thick mud - and this was just to set up the event!
Exhibitors will be arriving from tomorrow (Friday) morning, so by the time it opens to ticket holders the site is likely to be a bit of a mess, even though the weather forecast for this weekend isn't too bad.
Onto my main reason for this post:
Overton is a small rural village, and Laverstoke Park Farm is a little distance from Overton (about one country mile). The mobile networks around here are all patchy, but the situation gets worse the further away you are from the towns and villages.
With tens of thousands of people attending Carfest at any one time, there will be a lot of photography, sharing and social media updates, not to mention the usual smartphone tasks such as email, mapping, etc. So which network will work best?
If you have a spare phone and SIM card, will you be better off bringing that?
Overton has a decent, reliable 4G service on Vodafone, which stretches quite far into the surrounding countryside to the South (where Laverstoke Park Farm is located). Data speeds on HSDPA are around 1-5mbps when downloading and 1-2mbps when uploading.
O2 has 4G coverage in Overton, but this vanishes as soon as you escape the village. O2's 2G is much more patchy than Vodafone's 2G once you are out into the Hampshire countryside. Data speeds are ok, but O2 is prone to "stacking" calls, texts and throttling data if its masts get overloaded - which is a definite possibility this weekend.
Three is acceptable. Data speeds are ok, but often much slower than you would expect in large towns and cities. Calls drop often and texts are frequently delayed. Three is poor around here as it tends to give you a data connection but you later discover that people have been unable to call you for hours.
EE is utterly useless. You might just get a useable 2G signal in Overton, but finding a data connection is hard to come by and usually times out before anything can be done.
Also remember that there are very few masts around here, so congestion (especially on O2 as I have already mentioned) is highly likely.
There is a possibility that Vodafone will roll out one of their mobile network masts to such a large event, and I would hope that Vodafone do in fact do this as they are a local company (based up the road in Newbury).
Watch out for the mobile radar traps which will be positioned in and around the village - They've been making me nervous each time I pass them on my way to work.
Enjoy Carfest and all of the attractions it has to offer.
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