Behind every great athlete is a nervous network engineer

Had there been a functioning mobile network in Greece in 490BC, the messenger Pheidippides wouldn’t have had to run from Marathon to Athens, only to breathe his last as he delivered news of victory over the Persians. The modern reenactment of his feat in the Olympic marathon would have been a much shorter event, although the …

[dotdavid]

Roaming

If a good proportion of the visitors are from foreign climes, personally I doubt they'll be using too much pricey roaming mobile data.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Roaming

How else will they watch the silly running and jumping from the queue at Heathrow ?

[Just a geek]

Time to move the paralympics?

If countries have the paralympics before the main event rather than after it'll be a good test of security, systems and infrastruture.

[Jediben]

Don't forget that the IT infrastructure is useless without the relevant electricity supply to run it all. All the Wi-Fi hotspots and 4G coverage in the world will be for nought if the power goes out!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why there is a biomass power station in the park.

[Anonymous Coward]

Taxpayers rejoice!

I for one welcome anything that increases the amount (12 billion and rising) this charade will cost the UK taxpayers.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Taxpayers rejoice!

Surely your forgetting the lasting sporting heritage that it will bring to a new generation of fit and healthy children who will cast aside burgers and x-box in favour of running and jumping at their school's sports field.

[error handler]

Atlanta 1996 website on archive.org

... the Atlanta Games in 1996, the first such event to have its own website

http://web.archive.org/web/19961022174839/http://www.atlanta.olympic.org/

The imagemaps and CGIs are dead, but all the news articles and photos seem to be there.

I didn't try the audio streaming but if anyone wants to give it a go the plugin requires Netscape Navigator v2 or higher running on Windows 95 or NT :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF?

Did you ever consider that anyone who has worked on the Olympic Park Mobile Coverage project might read this before you put this generic BS together??

Practical output from MEG???!!! Too much information shielded due to commercial sensitivities to be useful.

Femtocells in the Park?? Er no unless there are a couple hidden.

What about the advanced fibre-DAS system put in place to keep the public covered without them having to see the mobile infrastructure in the stadia, or the fact that macros were forbidden in many places as they would spoil the broadcasters nice sightlines - not that the horrendously ugly lighting systems couldn't have been adapted for this purpose.

Or the fact that we can build the World's 2 biggest McDonalds on the Park, but providing power and transmission in plenty of time is beyond the whit of LOCOG and BT. The MNOs have a small city's-worth of kit in the same area typically covered by a couple of rural Base Stations and I think that they deserve a bit more credit for overcoming LOCOG's apathy towards anything that they don't get a cut of!

[YouStupidBoy]

“It’s a real unknown, because they have to try to plan when they really have no idea. On the cellular side, it’s all a bit finger in the air,” he says.

At least the telcos have plenty of practice at this aspect. Especially if it's the middle one.

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck with that...

"Still, if 3G is overloaded, there’s always the Wi-Fi, delivered by a partnership between BT, Cisco (official network infrastructure provider) and Atos (official gluer-together of different bits of kit)."

The phrase 'Couldn't organize a piss-up in a brewery' springs to mind.

BT broadband packs up again - second big outage in a fortnight

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/05/bt_broadband_outage/

Cisco backs down on cloud control of routers

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/06/cisco_connect_cloud_linksys/

Atos (French): "Have a pulse? No more disability benefit for you - get a job."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/feb/23/government-reform-disability-benefits

[Nigel Titley]

IPv6?

And don't forget Ipv6. We had it for the Beijing Olympics but the UK can't seem to manage it.

[Big-nosed Pengie]

Oh gods...

Not another fscking olympic games.

Time to go and live in a cave somewhere to escape it. Tell me when i'ts safe to come out.