Glastonbury is a major UK music festival that brings hundreds of thousands of
music fans to a farm in Somerset (Pilton). An event of this scale provides a
unique challenge for the mobile operators who, for the rest of the year, only
have to provide capacity for a very rural area, with the limited load that goes
with that. EE has taken on the challenge with an incredibly sophisticated array
of temporary masts: each is six sector (double the capacity of a 'normal' three
sector mast) and also carries three LTE Carriers for 55MHz of 4G capacity (20MHz
1800MHz, 20MHz 2600MHz + another 15MHz on 2600MHz) alongside 2G 1800MHz and 3G
2100MHz. As a result of the sophisticated setup, I have seen some very
impressive speedtests from the event.
EE's Glastonbury press release
A mast behind a marquee. There is a microwave link ontop, most likely connected to a central Glastonbury site for backhaul, and two stacks of panels below. All the panels are four port dual beam.
A closeup of the Glastonbury mast panels. The feeders of the top stack are yellow, indicating they are for 2600MHz. The four feeders into each panel for a single band indicates the panel is dual beam (produces two sectors) and therefore with three panels on each stack, a six sector setup is achieved.
A schematic of one side of one EE mast at Glastonbury. It's best to think of each panel as being two antennas (two 'X' columns), each with half the beamwidth of a usual cellular antenna. This means that each panel's coverage zone is composed of two half sectors. Therefore, with three panels, six sectors are formed.
A mast that looks like a very standard Vodafone and O2 4G mast and therefore probably is for their customers.