Tag: royal wedding

Vodafone network Royal Wedding statisitics

Here is some interesting information about the Vodafone mobile phone network during the Royal Wedding.

Network Wide Statistics

• Voice:
– entire Day attempts: 63,350,126 – down 2.17%
– calls between 09:00 and 12.30 – 12.4 million – down 17.4%
– calls between 11:00 and 11.30 – 1.65 million – down 31.6%

This is to be expected due to the metric focusing on the network as a whole and being a bank holiday where we have lower traffic than a normal working day. This fact makes the next set of statistics so impressive

• SMS:
– entire Day attempts: 138,446,608 – up 12.3%
– between 08:00 and 14:30 – 20.3 million – up 16%
– between 11:30 and 12:00 – 2.14 million – up 33.4%

• MMS
– 8am to 1pm – 185,108 – up 28.8% compare to last week
– peak between 11:35 and 11:40 – 4580 MMS submitted – up 53.59%

• Data
– 10:00 to 15:00 – 12.85 Terabytes sent/received – up 20.5%

Looking now at two of the primary online news sources we see significant uplifts in traffic driven by our data subscribers:

Mobile Website Traffic – Network Wide

• BBC News
– 161,350 Megabytes of traffic (entire day)
– 36.69% increase from the previous week
– peak between 11am and 1pm where traffic increased 219.47%

• SKY News
– 29,041 Megabytes of traffic (entire day)
– 45.27% increase from the previous week
– peak between 11am and 1pm where traffic increased 462.52%

Focussing in on the Royal wedding route we see some impressive results

Royal Wedding Location Statistics 08:00 – 15:00

• Voice Traffic
– total Attempts: 1,102,834 – 26.96% Increase from the previous week

• SMS Traffic
– total: 1,487,014 – 67.22% increase from the previous week

Royal Wedding Statistics – Bucklebury 08:00 – 15:00 (Katherine’s home village)

• Voice Traffic
– total Attempts: 14,027 – 6.27% Increase from the previous week

• SMS Traffic
– total: 29,953 – 12.12% increase from the previous week

Looking in general across our top sites that covered the Royal wedding route we can see that we carried a staggering amount of additional traffic with a very impressive call performance.

Top Site Traffic 08:00 – 15:00

• Temporary site at St James Park
– voice Attempts: 36,561 – Previous week site was not live.
– dropped Call Rate: 0.55%

• St James Park
– voice Attempts: 25,424 – 456.81% increase
– dropped Call Rate: 1.63%

• Hyde Park
– voice Attempts: 25,383 – 377.66% increase
– dropped Call Rate: 0.83%

• Knightsbridge
– voice Attempts: 37,197 – 152.34% increase
– dropped Call Rate: 0.8%

• Buckingham Palace
– voice Attempts: 22,138 – 503.87% increase
– dropped Call Rate: 0.75%

• Hyde Park
– voice Attempts: 23,086- 157.43% increase
– dropped Call Rate: 0.5%

 

The night before the Royal Wedding

Tents outside the abbey

I’m not really one to go crazy over royal weddings,  I was probably Elite on my BBC computer when the last one was on, but I do enjoy big events. I floated the idea of going up to London on the night before with Helen but she does not like big crowds. On Thursday morning I thought sod it I’ll leave work at 1600 (I had been there since 0730) and head up to the big smoke and have a look round. I might even link up with A&C who had decided to spend the night outside the Palace to ensure a view of “the kiss”.

I needed to get the car so I went home at lunch time and would you believe the Golden Plover I had see earlier on the way to work was still there so were 2 Curlew. Any way I got the car and grabbed my camera and went back to work. I managed to get to a mile stone in a project I am working on at work so did not feel guilty about skipping off.

I got to Berkhamsted, found a place to park and was on the 16:30 train to Euston. I went for a 30p pee, grabbed a sandwich and headed for the Northern line and headed south to Charring Cross. My plan was to head straight to Westmister Abbey then kind of follow the route back to Buckingham Palace where A&C were under canvas with the Canadians. There were plenty of people about but it did not seem more busy than usual.

At the abbey things were a bit tighter there were people camped out on the pavement with chairs and tents, it was hard to get by we had to go single file. I got a few pictures of the tent city, and then headed back to Parliament Square to get a picture of Big Ben surrounded by flags. From there I headed the park that is next to The Mall, there was not much space left at that point, you could have fitted the odd tent in but it was clear that if you wanted a space earlier Friday morning would be too late.

Parliament Square

I wandered down The Mall taking in the party atmosphere. At the end opposite the palace were the usual media village that gets erected for these occasions. It was a very busy place lots of traffic, and people out to see what it was all about just like myself.

It did not take me long to track down A&C the Canadian Maples were easy to find. They seemed pleased to see me and it was good to catch up with the Canadians again. I was offered a seat and settled in for an hour or so chatting and watching the world go by. From time to time some darkened windowed cars went past often followed by Range Rovers. We had lots of enquiries by Canadians asking us from which province we came, they had never heard of Buckinghamshire province!

I made my excuses and headed back down The Mall, when I got to the entrance to Clarence House there were lots of police telling people to keep out of the road, it soon became clear that someone was going to leave or arrive. I hung about and to see what was going on. First a very large Mercedes pulled up with Canadian flags on the dash board, a police man stopped the car and spoke to the man in the from who wound down the double glazed window. The policeman then called back to base to report that the Canadian Governor was coming through, and should he be allowed. After a mexican stand off as the car edged towards the policeman waiting for instructions, he eventually go the OK and the policeman stood aside.

The media village

A few minutes later the police got a bit stricter and some more turned up then all of a sudden a car left, then a few minutes later another and then another, I tried to get videos of the cars going past but the results were not very impressive. I had enough of seeing large cars with darkened windows at that point so headed back to the tube station, but not before using a portaloo, I was not about to pay another 30p to pee. I was soon back on the tube and heading towards Euston.

I had just missed the 2024, but the next train was at 2034 so just had time to grab a snack before heading to platform 8. When I got there confusion reigned there were two trains on the same platform, one was the 2024, which had the 2034 queued up behind. It turned out I could get on either so I chose the front train, and was soon back in Berkhamsted, where I found the car a drove home. All in all a great adventure.