BT Sees 13 Percent Olympics Traffic Spike

BT has reported a 13 percent increase in traffic on its national infrastructure over the last seven days, as the Olympic Games make their presence felt amongst operators.

The ISP said the average peak traffic on the BT London 2012 network was estimated to be over 6Gbps, in a post by the @BTlondon2012 Twitter account.

BT is also hosting the London2012.com website, and has claimed that it had attracted more than 1.3 billion page views on Sunday, when more tickets were put on sale. This level of traffic is likely to return now more tickets have been made available.

BT is the official networking partner for the Olympic Games and is providing the Wi-Fi coverage around the Olympic Park.

The techtastic Games

There has been plenty of interest in the Olympics from the tech community. Twitter in particular has been getting a lot of attention.

On Sunday, spectators at some Olympic events were asked to avoid sending non-urgent texts and tweets due to fears that overloaded mobile networks were affecting television coverage. The strain users placed on mobile networks was believed to have interfered with the cyclists’ GPS systems.

Yesterday, TechWeekEurope exclusively revealed that the London Organising Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) had initiated a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) project to support its mobile workforce.

Today, Twitter was asked to clarify its policies after it suspended the account of British journalist Guy Adams for criticising the Olympic coverage provided by the US broadcaster NBC.

When TechWeekEurope interviewed Gerry Pennell, CIO of LOCOG, he said  the consumerisation of technology was the biggest challenge facing an IT department today.

Are you a tech Olympian? Find out with our sporting IT quiz!