How do you know if a flight coming in is going to be delayed?
You have to connect to something - the airline, the air traffic control (unlikely outside UK airspace), the other airports, etc. Without that you have no idea if a flight is delayed, thus no idea if the next one has to be bumped down, etc.
You have to have a live connection for this to be anywhere near vaguely useful. That they can't get a redundant connection to Gatwick is ridiculous. They should never fall over, there should be multiple fibres km's apart from each other connecting to different towns at minimum I imagine. Can't fathom what Vodafone is doing running that, to be honest. Unless they're complaining that a 4G backup didn't work (but then... if that's the case... surely that 4G connection just runs from a local leased line, etc.?
That they need a connection isn't the problem. That they haven't got a suitably redundant connection is the problem. It looks immensely like the boards aren't even connected as well as, say, the cell tower in the terminal, or the free wifi.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
