By Sylwia Kechiche and Phillip Cilli
What happens when half a million people descend on a single city with smartphones in hand, simultaneously booking tickets, navigating between venues, posting selfies, and live streaming performances?
As the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the world’s largest arts festival, returns this August, we examine how mobile networks have performed during this high-density event in years past. With almost 3 million tickets sold annually and approximately 500,000 visitors packed into central Edinburgh, the Fringe creates an intense spike in demand on mobile infrastructure, rivalling major international events.
Key findings at a glance:
- Latency increased from 37ms in July to 63ms during August.
- Jitter rose from 5.6ms to 7.7ms, potentially affecting video calls and streaming quality.
- Upload speeds improved, likely reflecting a shift in network usage patterns – more people uploading than downloading.
Beyond anecdotes: what does the data say?
Festivalgoers and locals often report that mobile service in the city centre becomes unreliable during August. But how much of this is perception, and how much is real?
To answer this question, we applied the same analytical approach used in our coverage of large-scale events like the Paris Olympics, and its opening ceremony, examining network performance metrics that directly impact user experience. As such, instead of focusing solely on headline indicators like download speed, we looked at latency and jitter – two powerful indicators of real-time mobile network quality and congestion stress.
Latency spikes during the Fringe
During August in the past two years, average latency rose to 63ms, up from just 37ms in July. This increase in latency means users may have experienced slower app responsiveness, delayed page loads, and lag when accessing cloud services, which is not ideal when you're trying to find your next show, book last-minute tickets, or share their festival moments online.
Jitter disrupts real-time experiences
Jitter, the variation in latency between data packets, also saw an increase: 7.7ms in August compared to 5.6ms the month before. While jitter may seem minor compared to latency, its impact is more pronounced for real-time services. Festivalgoers making video calls, live-streaming performances, or using VoIP services likely experienced glitches, delays, or drops in call quality during peak periods.
Speed tells a different story
Interestingly, download and upload speeds didn’t show a consistent decline. In fact, upload speeds increased in August, potentially reflecting a different usage mix. With thousands of tourists and performers posting videos, uploading content, and livestreaming, this uplift may be a sign of network optimization, or simply the shift in who is using the network and how. Given Edinburgh's status as a student city, which is popular for tourism, seasonal patterns in mobile usage could also play a role in shaping overall performance.
The Fringe isn't just a cultural event, it’s a real-world stress test for mobile networks.
- For operators, this is an opportunity to identify congestion hotspots and optimize coverage and capacity planning for high-demand events.
- For city planners, the insights highlight the importance of infrastructure readiness during major tourism peaks.
- For users, it underscores why your phone might feel slower, even with full bars, when the city is buzzing.
Events like the Edinburgh Fringe provide invaluable insights into how mobile networks perform under pressure. If you're a network operator, public authority, or event organizer looking to better understand and prepare for demand surges, Opensignal can help. Contact us to explore how our real-world mobile experience data can support your planning.
If you're attending this year’s Fringe, we’d love to hear about your experience. You can check how your network is performing by downloading the Opensignal app.
Methodology
We analysed two full years of Opensignal data (1 July 2023 to 30 June 2025), which we then averaged to show a typical mobile experience during a given month. The dataset covers all mobile network generations (3G, 4G, and 5G) and reflects the average user experience across four mobile network operators in the city.
We focused our analysis on key locations in central Edinburgh that experience particularly high footfall during the Fringe Festival, to offer a meaningful view of how network performance changes where demand is greatest (see below).
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