News / Pop up wi-fi to live stream festival
LOCAL internet provider Shetland Broadband is setting up a free weekend wifi service at this weekend’s Glusstonberry festival, allowing the event to be streamed live online.
Brae-based Ian Brown, of Shetland Broadband, offered to set up the service as a favour for the festival organisers, so people could use their mobile phones and portable computers at the remote site at Gluss, in Ollaberry.
Marketing agency Promote Shetland have taken the idea one step further by organising a camera to film the main stage where 28 bands and artists will be performing and beaming it out on www.60north.tv.
On Thursday Brown was still trying to overcome technical issues, not least the fog, to connect his portable mast on a hill at Gluss via radio link with the fibre optic cable at Sella Ness three miles away across Sullom Voe.
If successful, the exercise, which will cost a couple of thousand pounds to set up, will demonstrate how quickly fast broadband connections can be set up in remote parts of the isles that are relatively close to Shetland Telecom’s fibre optic cable.
Brown pointed out it would not work in a place like Baltasound on Unst which is too far away from the cable.
Andy Steven, of Promote Shetland, said: “This will show how quickly you can put a community broadband infrastructure in place, and become a living example of how the council’s investment in a fibre optic cable can benefit communities.”
Steven is hoping festival goers will be using the opportunity to send out messages and updates on Twitter and Facebook throughout the weekend.
More information about the festival can be found at glusstonberry.com
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