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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Eamonn Forde

Lost in a crowd: why phone signal is still so scarce at UK music festivals

The crowd at Leeds festival in 2021
The crowd at Leeds festival in 2021. Photograph: Andrew Benge/Redferns

This bank holiday weekend is one of the last big dates in the UK summer festival calendar, with Reading and Leeds, All Points East and Creamfields North expected to draw huge crowds.

With large attendance numbers at festivals come overloaded mobile phone networks, resulting in friends losing touch with one another and parents being unable to contact their teenagers on their first big weekend away at Reading and Leeds, long a bacchanalian rite of passage for post-results GCSE and A-level students.

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