The Glastonbury festival is one of the UK’s biggest cultural events – this year 210,000 people attended the event, which was headlined by Dua Lipa, Coldplay and SZA.
And although the main Pyramid stage is where the festival’s biggest acts dust off their hits, the event is enormous, with festival-goers entertained by acts and performers across more than 100 stages.
An event of this scale – with performances of all shapes and sizes – requires a lot of equipment to run smoothly. A lot of this equipment, including wireless microphones, in-ear monitors, wireless cameras and other devices, uses radio spectrum to function.
Some acts require more wireless gear than others – for example this year headliners Coldplay used 140 frequencies for a range of equipment including 42 in-ear monitors.
And, as in previous years, Ofcom was on site to make sure things went smoothly on this front.
This wireless equipment has to be licensed and managed carefully to make sure none of it causes interference – either with other performance kit or with communications equipment being used at and around the festival. To do this, each piece of equipment must use its own frequency on the radio spectrum.
Our licensing and programme-making and special events (PMSE) teams work hard before and during the event, issuing licences for frequencies used by the equipment and being available at the venue to help identify and address any issues.
This year we licensed more than 2,000 individual frequencies. On top of that, this year saw the first use of a newly-authorised spectrum band.
There were no reports of interference during the event, meaning everything went smoothly thanks to the hard work of our teams.
Graham Plumb, director of spectrum planning at Ofcom, attended the festival with our teams this year to see the set-up work first-hand – and took these photos that give a flavour of the work that goes on to prepare for such a large event.
Graham Plumb, director of spectrum planning at Ofcom, attended the festival with our teams this year to see the work first-hand – and took these photos that give a flavour of the work that goes on at such a large event.
Photos from Glastonbury 2024
