One of Britain’s longest-running and most famous music festivals is this year turning to a herd of brightly painted, life-size, fiber-glass cows to solve the problem of Wi-Fi connectivity at the event.
Supplied by the country’s largest mobile operator, EE, the colorful high-tech cows have been placed around the festival site to enable revelers to tweet, Instagram, and Facebook their way across all five days of the massive music event, which gets underway on Wednesday in Glastonbury, south-west England.
The almost-annual event has taken place on farmland in the county of Somerset since 1970, with EE’s bovine-based solution appearing on the site for the first time in the festival’s history.
Equipped with 4G and Wi-Fi technology, EE’s so-called ‘high-speed herd’ will enable music fans on any network to jump online free of charge while inside the festival grounds.
“Staying connected has become an essential part of any festival-goer’s experience and we are thrilled to be back supporting Glastonbury Festival, helping to ensure those on site have the best possible experience,” Spencer McHugh, EE’s brand director, said in a release.
EE will also bring contactless payment points to this week’s event, comprising over 100 card readers in 25 bars, as well as ‘Cash on Tap’ facilities for EE customers that allows them to pay for items up to $34 with a mobile phone.
Around 135,000 tickets sold out in just 100 minutes for this year’s bash, which includes hundreds of acts across nine main stages, and a ton of other stuff besides….including brightly painted, life-size, fiber-glass cows.
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