Vodafone UK claimed to have successfully completed a network slicing demonstration, partnering with beverage vendor EBC to speed the purchasing of drinks at the recent Glastonbury music festival.

The operator explained it offered a dedicated slice of connectivity to EBC, using the technology for faster card transactions when festival goers purchased beverages and therefore allowing them to spend more time at the stages.

In total, Vodafone stated 200,000 attendees attended the festival, generating 225TB of data on its network across the five days, a 33 per cent year-on-year increase.

The company constructed a temporary telecoms network specifically for the festival in the space of three weeks.

Through network slicing, Vodafone stated it reserved a small portion of its network to one of the festival’s bar operators, “to increase reliability of payment machines” on three of their ten sites.

The demonstration connected three sites to a slice, serving 102 tills in total. During peak times, each till was able to process two transactions a minute.

In providing a dedicated slice to EBC’s payment machines, Vodafone said it was able to ensure its performance was not impacted by other users’ demand on the network.

Nick Gliddon, business director at Vodafone UK, said the future of digital technology “is designed to connect anything and everything. It is so much more than a network for our smartphones and will impact every facet of our lives”.

In August 2023, the company also partnered with Ericsson to complete a network slicing trial for cloud gaming.