IOC asks Olympic spectators to cut back TXTs and tweets The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has blamed spectators’ twitchy thumbs for the infamously spotty television coverage of the Men’s Olympic Cycling Road Race. Reuters reports an un-named official said the sheer volume of data traffic generated by the million-plus spectators on the route prevented cyclists’ GPS units …
Indeed. I'm sure the RSGB could help them out with an alternative system.
APRS with some cheap radios on a commercial UHF frequency would possibly do quite nicely.
I agree in principle, but if you've got a cell out in the middle of the countryside and suddenly tens of thousands turn up to watch the bikes go by, you may not be able to cope. Trees and hills are also a problem for GHz signals - living in the Chilterns, I know whereof I speak.
"If the service providers can't provide a service they shouldn't have bid for the contracts in the first place."
Did anyone bid for this contract? It sounds much more like cyclists were all using tried and tested off-the-shelf hardware. Presumably it is the same tech that didn't fail during the Tour de France, and that's hardly a minor event.
These Olympics have cost quite enough already. Can you imagine what the comments on this site would have been if the IOC had tried to implement their own cell network? "What a waste of money? Why can't they use the extensive network(s) that are already there? Jeeeesus, I could do it myself for a fiver and still make a profit. What a bunch of idiots! ... (continued on page 94)"
They have every right to *ask* and that's all they have done. It's like your neighbour asking you not to park outside your house if he (or she) has a delivery coming. He or she can ask, but they cannot compel you to comply.
That said, where I work, we were told by OFCOM to switch off all unlicenced radio transmitters (even those that did not require a licence, like Wireless Mics) as we are next to an Olympic venue, and LOCOG wanted all unlicenced frequencies available both for security and in case they needed them. We were also told that OFCOM would be actively scanning the area.
So, it's not as if LOCOG didn't have the radio bandwidth available, they presumably were trying to avoid the cost of the infrastructure required to use it.
None of which lets O2 off the hook. They can wheel in mobile cell towers where there are festivals and other big events. Would it not have been possible to wheel in one or two to carry the load of the Olympics? After all, if people were managing to clog up the existing cell(s) with text messages, it's not as the profits wouldn't justify it.
"Oh and on a side note... that bike rider and go kiss a wombat... exactly what obligation did our valiant athletes have to help the dirty pommy bugger?"
None whatsoever - if GB didn't respond to the breakaway then it's their fault.
It's just that Team Sky didn't have their Aussie to do the hard work.
(yes, I know -- but who didn't keep thinking it was the Sky team?)
This pommy bugger agrees with you. I presume that there would have been no question of sharing the gold medal had the Aussies "done their bit to help".
On the other hand, I'm prepared to believe that someone whose Olympic dreams have just crashed and burned might be in a state of mind where they make ill-judged comments that it would be kindest to politely ignore.
Regarding the mens road race, no one had any obligation to help the GB boys chase, but it is the usual form for teams not represented in the break to get together to chase. In this case two teams not represented in the break but with fast sprinters (Germany and Australia) appear to have decided not to help with the chase. It's not the usual thing to happen, but maybe because it's national teams instead of trade teams that made a difference.
Cav can be beaten in a sprint, but only by careful thought. In this case it seems to have been the thought that by ensuring he couldn't go for the win then he and all the other sprinters would be beaten to the line.
Next thing someone will be complaining that Vino served a suspension for doping a few years ago.
Mine's the one with Barry Hoban's autobiography in the pocket.
Than the twats on TV.
Seriously, every nation is making a complete and utter dogs breakfast of it.
Easier to watch the raw footage, with the sound turned down than listen to NBC go on about how the Olympics related to Ryan Seacreast and dancing with the stars.
Or worse yet, CBC (Canada's broadcaster) Playing "5 degrees of separation" with every athlete and Canada.
Worst of all is the Australian coverage, with consists of the presenters masturbating furiously when an Australian wins a medal.
If no one is winning a medal, they cut back to past Olympics of the same event, where they did win a medal, and start jacking it all over again
If no one is winning a medal, they cut back to past Olympics of the same event, where they did win a medal, and start jacking it all over again
I couldn't agree more. It's soul-destroying to watch and I regret not coughing up for a UK-exit VPN. Anyone who complains about the Beeb should be forced to sit and watch ultra parochial Nine's coverage.
Example: the canoe slalom (introduced as "slaylom") just showed the Aussie competitor and no one else. It's pretty much all like that. They didn't even show the end of the women's road race last night cos some Aussie was 97th in the men's 750 metre knitting relay and that was deemed more important.
I'm not going to bother watching anymore of the first week. The Aussies have all gone home by then and the real sport begins.
"Worst of all is the Australian coverage, with consists of the presenters masturbating furiously when an Australian wins a medal.
If no one is winning a medal, they cut back to past Olympics of the same event, where they did win a medal, and start jacking it all over again"
Are they *cute* presenters?
Not only that, but they're fat, middle aged *rugby league* presenters, who present every sport as if some beer swilling bogan is about to throw a punch in someones face. (except for the gymnastics commentator, who apparently feels the need to berate every athlete for every mistake that *she* would *never* have made).
As usual, SBS coverage will be the one I watch - there might be less coverage of Australia, but at least the commentators rely on professionalism and skill to create interest, rather than simply shouting their banal comments into the microphone a bit louder.
Try the Spanish coverage of the opening ceremony, which was getting half the cultural references which they did bother to explain wrong and then a countdown to the appearance of the Spanish team and then a special camera following the Spanish team for the rest of the parade of nations and the commentary switching to talk about the Spanish team. Why they needed a special camera following them I'm not sure, it's not as if their clothing didn't make them stand out.
Cell systems are not equal opportunity. They have Class of Service which can allow one user have service whilst the guy right to him, on the same network, gets a busy.
It would hardly be noticed had the cell companies changed the COS for the riders for the duration of the race.
Another IOC failure.
My sister lives on the cycling route and reported no issues at all. Sure she was texting, facebooking and uploading pictures of the cyclists. Her data stream seemed to work fine, and is presumably of such strength that the few KB of GPS data the cyclists were beaming back to the IOC were swamped.
I am guessing someone bought some cheap gear and it didn't work as expected.
Also, do they not have this problem in paris at the end of the TDF? they didn't seem to have it this year and I am pretty sure the French have modern phones!
isn't it required that you provide evidence or proof? Otherwise it's merely a denial.
Not that I care either way. If it happened that the Aussie team would rather ensure GB don't win, than give themselves a chance of winning, they're allowed to. Seems a bit feeble to me, though. Most likely they just ballsed up their tactics as well :-)
Dutch - NOS.
And the coverage - the camerawork and direction - was good. They mostly had the motos in the right places (and "mostly" is pretty good). Shame they couldn't use a heli on Box Hill, but the trees couldn't be cut back enough to make that possible. Perhaps not quite as good as France 2 during the Tour, but much better than the complete shambles Spanish TV made of the Angliru climb on the Vuelta last year.
The problem was the data. Without gap info, a peloton/breakaway chase is tricky to follow. Without the GPS data, the auto-id of riders in a group was also missing, which left you with the commentary to ID the groups. Even the best commentators make mistakes; you should get the teams right nearly always, but until you see the number or a close-up, you can't be sure of that many individual riders.
But the BBC commentary was terrible. Porter was a complete waste of space, which kept Boardman busy identifying riders and correcting Porter's errors, leaving him no time to analyse. I suspect that Boardman would do fine in the Paul Sherwen/Sean Kelly if he had someone as good as Phil Liggett or David Harmon alongside him.
Presumably the IOC is going to start demanding Olympic data lanes as well, in future. Everything that goes wrong at the Olympics seems to be astonishingly, gob-smackingly, mind-numbingly predictable, and the attitude of everyone organising assumes that everything will work perfectly when it absolutely has to. Hello trees, hello sky...
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