News | 13 Feb 2020

Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium receives 4G speed boost from Vodafone

(Photo: Cléria De Souza)

The Etihad Stadium, home to Manchester City Football Club, and Cardiff’s Principality Stadium, have received a 4G network boost from Vodafone UK.

Man City fans, along with other visitors to the sixth largest ground in the Premier League, can now enjoy even better mobile reception.

The network improvements not only bring faster download and upload speeds, but also increased network capacity to meet the demands of bigger crowds attending matches and other events, such as concerts. 

Vodafone UK has also brought 4G network improvements to Cardiff’s Principality Stadium, also known as the Millennium Stadium.

Data hungry

“These 4G network upgrades are essential to meet the soaring demand for mobile services at these venues,” James Grayling, Vodafone UK’s Head of Strategic Deployment said.

During just one Six Nations rugby match held at the Principality Stadium in February 2019, mobile data usage reached 173 gigabytes (GB).

At a subsequent Six Nations match held a year later, mobile data usage ballooned to 581GB – an increase of more than 200%. 

The 4G upgrades at these stadia build upon Vodafone UK’s expertise in bringing fast and reliable mobile communications to dense, thronging crowds of people at special events.

The performance of Vodafone UK’s 4G network, in which it has invested £4.5bn over the past five years, has been recognised by independent network testing experts umlaut and nPerf.