Chalke Valley History Festival gets superfast

This week we’re providing a superfast & low-latency Internet connection for the Daily Mail Chalke Valley History Festival, based at Ebbesbourne Wake, Wiltshire.

The week-long event each June is the largest dedicated history festival of its kind in the UK, and has attracted in the past, highly respected and famous speakers such as Boris Johnson, Dan Snow and Damien Lewis. The event in 2015 spans the entire week from June 22nd to 28th, and with significant major anniversary’s for Magna Carta (800), The Battle of Waterloo (200), Start of WWI (100), VE Day (70) to name a few, the festivals is sure to be a treat for anyone fortunate to have a ticket.

Although the Chalke Valley History Festival’s focus is on the past, their behind the scenes operations and technology is cutting edge. A large part of their operations, including their ticketing system, requires a fast & highly-reliable Internet connection, and in a field in the middle of the Chalke Valley, this makes receiving any connection a real challenge, let along a high performing one. In previous years they have relied on satellite connectivity. However challenges with satellite and the inherently very high latency (delays to and from space), sluggish performance, contention and drop outs during poor weather meant that they needed something better. Their ticketing system is based online, the press and BBC need fast upload speeds to transit their high-resolution photos and articles, traders need connectivity to accept card payments, and then there’s Wi-Fi access for the guest speakers and public to consider.

In early 2015, Wessex Internet expanded its superfast, reliable and low-latency Internet service to neighbouring Alvediston, a village at the end of the BT copper lines. Before Wessex Internet arrived, homes could only manage a paltry fraction of a Mb/s. With engagement from the community, Wessex Internet expanded its service to an area that was left behind in the slow lane, and since the investment and upgrade, villagers are able to receive up to 50 Mb/s superfast broadband.

The side-benefit from our new Alvediston Point of Presence (POP) is that there’s now great coverage of the Chalke Valley History Festival’s site from the new POP. A temporary superfast connection could be delivered during their event that would meet their strict requirements. The Festival are now online using a symmetric 40 Mb/s fixed-wireless connection, delivered using Wessex Internet’s mobile event mast, with low sub 15 millisecond latency to London. The service is fully managed and proactively monitored, with strict SLAs for on-site support if required.

Wessex Internet have a track record providing temporary superfast event Internet connections and networks. In July and September this year, Wessex Internet will return to help the Larmer Tree and End of the Road Festivals with their total Internet connection and Wide Area Network Wi-Fi and VoIP phone requirements. Up to 7,000 and up to 14,000 people respectively on the Dorset/Wiltshire boarder near Tollard Royal will have access to the Wessex Internet network, and the festival’s increasing use of high-tech barcoded tickets and online systems will tap into the resilient 1 Gigabit fibre network we have at the Larmer Tree Gardens.

Charity fundraisers have also benefitted from the Wessex Internet networks as these events now make use of the online bidding platforms available that allows remote as well as on-site fundraisers the ability to bid in real-time. Wessex have loaned Wi-Fi Access Points and superfast Internet connections for a fundraiser in Tisbury earlier this year, and a silent auction raising money for Julia’s House Children’s Hospice last summer.