Why we’re taking a cow to a horse race

This Saturday, one of the most famous horse races in the world is happening at Aintree. We turned up on Wednesday with a cow. Here’s why…

We’re expecting over 30,000 people at the Grand National to be on O2 – all filling the airwaves with a flurry of texts, whatsapps and pictures of winning slips. We reckon there’ll be a 50% rise in calls and a 70% increase in data use for the area compared to a regular day.

To meet this demand we sent out the CoW (Cell on Wheels) and some of her best herders (our engineers) to make sure you’re connected at the course. The cow lets us temporarily boost coverage in a certain area and we’ve been speaking to event organisers around the country to get it rolled out to special events all year.

Claire Venners, chief herder (or Special Projects Manager in our Network team) said: “We were really pleased to be adding a 4G COW to our “herd” of vehicles. The speeds we can achieve are really exciting and we’re looking forward to bringing our customers even better network experience not just this weekend, but when they’re out having fun this summer”.

The cow – it’s really kind of like a van with a big antenna – comes with a lot of technical stuff inside which means we can give you 2G, 3G and 4G coverage at the race. The last time it got an outing it racked up 40Mbps in download speeds – pretty pacey for a cow.

So there we have it, that’s why we’re taking a cow to a horse race. Good luck to everyone in their sweepstakes. Our only tip is to keep your phone charged for the inevitable horse selfie when the one you’ve backed becomes a winner.