Walkie Talkies

[Crazyfool01]

9 minutes ago, clarkete said:

A lot of people wasted hours at various places, and you'd see increasingly desperate messages as the weekend went by, plus of course it's a big site and whoever you post for may never check that point - hence more meetings at x bar, or back at camp

Great that @Ommadawnshared a picture though, for those who never saw them. 

Yeah that’s what I imagined tbh 🙂 quite amusing though 

[fred quimby]

13 minutes ago, Pinhead said:

Yeah, basically the moment everyone got in it just went to pot and though well intentioned the messages mostly went unread I reckon. But that was the fun of it then!

There used to be some funny ones but never remember them.

I do remember one that read

John it's Bill. Meet you Friday 12pm at such-and-such,  or 3 at such-and-such or Saturday at such-and-such it went on and finished with. If I am not at any of these then I am totally wasted and forgotten I have even written this

[FrancisH]

Only had issues with sending / receiving in big crowds. Standing at main stages just before a band using the old "I'm by the yellow flag with an ET riding a unicorn on it" was a no go for us. In the end we just planned a bit in advance and met up in quieter areas by specific food trucks.

[mungo57]

2 hours ago, Gnomicide said:

3 is still shit at Glastonbury but on the other hand, it still has decent prices (I'm currently on £9.00 per month for unlimited texts and calls with 8GB). It was OKish for WhatsApp messages but forget Twitter etc. unless you go to the top of T&C where it's fine.

I think you just need to be higher up, we were fine lte at night back at the tent in the disabled campsite but pretty bad everywhere else at the fest.

probably gonna get PAYG EE cards just for festival comms

[clarkete]

2 minutes ago, mungo57 said:

probably gonna get PAYG EE cards just for festival comms

Don't suppose we know which other providers also use EE, or is it best to stick to theirs? 

[Crazyfool01]

3 minutes ago, clarkete said:

Don't suppose we know which other providers also use EE, or is it best to stick to theirs? 

 

[Mark E. Spliff]

3 hours ago, fred quimby said:

Be lots of production areas using Walkie Talkies and police etc as well,  so need to gave the correct channel not to interfere 

This is true, but the big outfits (security, bars etc.) will be using some form of digital 2-way radio, which won't interfere with the walkie-talkies you'd buy from Argos.  I've used one of said Argos walkie-talkies many years ago at Glastonbury, and there was often someone else using whichever channel you'd selected - either individuals or smaller traders.  We did find them fun to use, but not really practical as it's usually too noisy to hear someone calling you or hold a conversation.  On the drive home, there were a few of us in separate cars talking to each other and being very impressed by the distance over which they still worked.

[Suprefan]

EE sim card. Line of sight is the big thing with walkie talkies and there are way too many obstacles that shorten the range. Spend the £20. Reception was great on EE except for a couple spots during the 5 days. 

[glasto-worker]

14 hours ago, Alcatraz said:

Wasn't there last year, but phones/4G was reliable in 2019. I'm on O2

 

14 hours ago, mungo57 said:

I've been on 3 for Donkey's years, last time I went (admittedly 2016 so improvements may have been made) the signal was dreadful until the wee smalls then we managed to get signal.

The Joker who set up the Crew WI-FI screwed up this year and no one could access it ' even with the correct account/password '- he had moved on to another job so cant say what the problem was.

Anyway I am with ' Three ' and I can confirm to Mungo57 ' using a 4G Android phone was impossible during the day until 3.30am - 

But the Clear Winners was people with 5G phones or people using EE/BT

I was not even trying to make a call ' just trying to show a bloody photo stored on my phone ' ## but it refused to work ## - cant connect to server - even although the photo is stored on my memory card. { Not in the cloud }

Very annoying and the people I was sitting with made a ' 5G video call '
and they got their kids to do a tour of their new house - no interruption - it
was amazing the quality.

## but my phone would not display the bloody photo until 3.30am ##

But my friend who lives in Iceland { Icelandic sim card } and was working with me this year - 4G phone did connect to the internet and he could make and receive phone calls 

## by the way it was not just ' Three ' but the clear winner is EE/BT ##

a short text would not leave my phone until 3.30am

[stuie]

On 12/2/2022 at 1:03 PM, Willy-wam-wam-wozzle said:

Agree with the poster who mentioned time stamping text messages so you can tell how long ago they were sent, I tend to do this most fests and is pretty helpful!

Just use whatsapp with EE and there's no need for any of this - see when messages have been delivered/read and the times they were sent etc. 

[guypjfreak]

Makes you look like security or old bill imo lololol 

[MrZigster]

All this talk of, "Go with EE and you'll be fine".

Not my experience this year.

Managed to phone home every day no problem, but my SMSs from Thursday afternoon onwards didn't get through to my friend on site until late afternoon on the Monday when we were both nearly home. Probably missed a few meet ups because of that.

Should have tried ringing them I suppose. Doh.

OK I only had an old PAYG dumb Nokia phone with me but even so...

 

 

[stuie]

3 minutes ago, MrZigster said:

All this talk of, "Go with EE and you'll be fine".

Not my experience this year.

Managed to phone home every day no problem, but my SMSs from Thursday afternoon onwards didn't get through to my friend on site until late afternoon on the Monday when we were both nearly home. Probably missed a few meet ups because of that.

Should have tried ringing them I suppose. Doh.

OK I only had an old PAYG dumb Nokia phone with me but even so...

 

 

I’d guess your friend wasn’t on EE but WhatsApp and EE works perfectly, as does calling between 2 EE connections. I had video calls back home and uploaded vids to insta etc too!

[MrZigster]

4 minutes ago, stuie said:

I’d guess your friend wasn’t on EE but WhatsApp and EE works perfectly, as does calling between 2 EE connections. I had video calls back home and uploaded vids to insta etc too!

I think you may have missed the "old PAYG dumb Nokia phone" bit.

[Leyrulion]

34 minutes ago, stuie said:

Just use whatsapp with EE and there's no need for any of this - see when messages have been delivered/read and the times they were sent etc. 

Except when it's 2am in the SE and you forget what button to press to get that info up. 

[deepkittycaz]

On 12/3/2022 at 2:52 AM, glasto-worker said:

 

The Joker who set up the Crew WI-FI screwed up this year and no one could access it ' even with the correct account/password '- he had moved on to another job so cant say what the problem was.

I wonder if it was the same idiot who put the Lockups crew WiFi in one of the actual lock ups halfway across the site, rather than in base control!

[glasto-worker]

1 hour ago, deepkittycaz said:

I wonder if it was the same idiot who put the Lockups crew WiFi in one of the actual lock ups halfway across the site, rather than in base control!

Could not say - Our site director tested positive for Covid { in Scotland } so did not show up until Sunday 26/6 so by then there was not much point trying to rectify it - whoever it was ' they will not get that job next year '

100% if he had been there at the start he would have spotted it straight away and it would have been running correctly.

just sods law.

[Neil]

On 12/2/2022 at 2:14 PM, FrancisH said:

Only had issues with sending / receiving in big crowds. Standing at main stages just before a band using the old "I'm by the yellow flag with an ET riding a unicorn on it" was a no go for us. In the end we just planned a bit in advance and met up in quieter areas by specific food trucks.

i didn't have a problem all weekend, but did spend all my time on the west side of the site, the temporary phone masts are on the west side.

[incident]

17 hours ago, MrZigster said:

I think you may have missed the "old PAYG dumb Nokia phone" bit.

To be honest while I appreciate the idea of going "dumb", and can see the obvious battery life advantage, it's kind of asking for trouble these days. Part of EE providing extra signal at Glastonbury is for the marketing boost, and so they're going to focus on things they can sell like 4G/Data.

For what it's worth you can now get dumb phones with 4G capability and still retaining solid battery life. Can't say I've tried any of them mind.

[glasto-worker]

On 12/8/2022 at 10:44 PM, MrZigster said:

All this talk of, "Go with EE and you'll be fine".

Not my experience this year.

Managed to phone home every day no problem, but my SMSs from Thursday afternoon onwards didn't get through to my friend on site until late afternoon on the Monday when we were both nearly home. Probably missed a few meet ups because of that.

Should have tried ringing them I suppose. Doh.

OK I only had an old PAYG dumb Nokia phone with me but even so...

 

 

Hi Mark  - Years ago - have not a clue which mobile provider - but that does not matter.

For reasons I forget - I had to drive back to London late Sunday night { more like early Monday morning } - a friend who lives in Croydon was working in the cash room but was uncertain when she would finish but she asked me if I could drive her back - anyway on the Sunday evening ' ever hour I sent a text ' ## but she never replied ##

- I was well baffled but I did meet one of her friends and she thought she would end her shift about Midnight so was hanging about in the Crew bar { as it was very busy sent another text with the table number } - still no show - anyway I did bump into her ## but she had not packed her tent ## after we got that sorted we drove out at about 3am - we were heading up to Shepton Mallet ' when her phone and my phone received  streams of texts ' - she had sent me loads and so had I - I know I did try to make a voice call ' but it claimed her phone was switched off'  ## and she also tried to reach me { and got the same message } ## but I know my phone was never turned off on that Sunday.

Anyway we did make it back to Croydon

hope your fit.

[Boris]

Can't you just change the network provider you are connecting through rather than the SIM card?

 

[clarkete]

39 minutes ago, Boris said:

Can't you just change the network provider you are connecting through rather than the SIM card?

 

No

[incident]

3 hours ago, Boris said:

Can't you just change the network provider you are connecting through rather than the SIM card?

If you have a phone that supports eSIM, then you can add an account and enable/disable it without changing the physical sim card - however I think that (so far) there aren't any EE based networks offering eSIM access without signing up to a full contract.

Beyond that, the only "sort of" on this is people with non-uk sim cards* who are roaming onto UK networks can manually select / override which network they roam onto if they go into their phones settings rather than just accept the (pseudo random) default.

*same also applies if someone has a multi network sim - but they're rare and expensive.

2 hours ago, clarkete said:

No

So yeah, for most people effectively this.

[UEF]

Another vote for EE here - been good the last couple of years, and lesser networks (Three, unlimited crap per month) struggle a lot.

Don't wait til you get there to see how it goes. 

[Cherry Tree]

Plusnet piggyback on EE, there is a current 5gb sim only deal at £8 a month on a monthly contract. If available next May/June it may be worth considering.