CROWDS at this year's Glastonbury festival were monitored thanks to technology provided by two North Staffordshire firms.

Teams from Keele-based Internet Central and Broadband Logistics, of Stoke, travelled down to Somerset to help keep an eye on traffic and crowd control at the famous music event, which took place over the weekend.

Security is a major operation at the festival, which this year attracted 137,500 music fans and was headlined by Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen and Blur.

Its site at Worthy Farm measures more than a mile-and-a-half across, with a perimeter of eight-and-a-half miles.

Dave Thorpe, director of operations at internet services firm Internet Central, said: "It's great for two local companies to team up to be involved with such a well-known event as Glastonbury.

"It is vital for such an event that the broadband links are both fast and reliable, and we believe our expertise in working on past events has prepared us for this."

Internet Central provided the high-speed technology behind Glastonbury's new broadband CCTV, allowing its management team to view cameras monitoring crowd and traffic levels via a Virtual Private Network (VPN), which is connected to the main control room.

The speed of the broadband connection and the security levels of the VPN mean there is no time delay in the images being relayed, giving the team up-to-the-second information.

Staff at Internet Central were also on hand to provide full cover support to the festival team, with dedicated engineers answering their questions immediately through a live chat facility, without the need for them to make a phone call or send an email.

A team from Broadband Logistics travelled to the festival to fit the broadband equipment needed for the CCTV cameras.

And officials at the event were so pleased with the two firms' performance that they plan to hire them again next year.

Tony Daniel, communications manager for the festival, said: "Each year our technology steps up a level and over the last six years we have used CCTV to monitor traffic and crowd issues on both the inside and outside of the perimeter.

"We have always suffered from poor quality networks in the village and other locations along the A361 and A37. This has meant that the video keeps dropping out and for long times we have had no signals reaching the site."

He added: "This year we used Broadband Logistics and Internet Central for our external provision.

"It was supplied on time, configured quickly and has been up from day one with no interruptions – something we have not had before.

"So we know who we will be using in the future, based on this year's performance."

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