Tonbridge Angels Football Club – 4G Internet Solution
The Problem
The Football Club is located on the outskirts of town away from any built up resedential areas, so the current broadband connection had been causing problems for some time. At busy times the connection would disconnect and could take a long time to reconnect. This was particularly apparent on match days when the club relied heavily on the connection to take card payments via card terminals. If the connection went down on match days the club would have to revert to taking cash payment and with not everyone carrying cash, this would mean the club would be missing out on match day revenue. It would also slow the transaction process time down, leading to longer queues and again, loss of revenue as supporters gave up waiting.
Our Solution
We were tasked with finding a cost effective solution to overcome the problem. Unfortunately a dedicated leased line was going to be too expensive for the club, given the geographic location of the football stadium and the construction charges needed to get fibre to the ground. We quickly got to work looking at which 4G providers seemed to have the best 4G data coverage in the area, whilst also doing some research by speaking to people who use different networks for data on their own mobile devices.
It became apparent that EE had the best 4G signal in the area and so tests were completed to ensure this was the case. A new 4G router was configured and installed and the 4G data connection was activated. Speeds had increased from around 10mbps download with the existing troublesome broadband connection, to around 20mbps download on the new EE 4G connection, which also seemed to be more stable.
Since the 4G connection has been in place there have been no more connectivitly issues on match days.