Skip to main content

London Olympics could cause mobile phone blackout

london 2012These days, during a big event like a sports game, spectators go into overdrive with their smartphones. Tweets are fired off like there’s no tomorrow, photos are snapped and sent and short videos of proceedings are taken and uploaded to the web.

It’s expected that at next year’s London Olympics unprecedented amounts of data will be flying around the UK capital. In fact, there’ll be so much demand on the mobile network that London mayor Boris Johnson said this week that it might not be able to handle the massive surge in traffic, resulting in the unthinkable: mobile phones might not work in London during the 2012 Olympics.

According to a Telegraph report, Johnson said organizers were trying to work out ways of moving mobile phone capacity to the Olympic Park from other parts of the city but that the growing popularity of smartphones and tablets was making the task ever more difficult.

“We are doing a huge amount of work to ensure there is enough coverage,” Johnson said. “But we have got to be realistic, in the men’s 100m final people want to download huge quantities of data which will put a massive strain on the networks. We are looking to install enough masts and have enough physical infrastructure and coverage for the huge demands, I am confident we will crack it.”

Such a network crash would of course be a big embarrassment for the city, but more importantly, it would have a huge impact on security arrangements and affect communication among workers and volunteers at the event. On top of that there’d be millions of frustrated spectators, tourists and locals unable to use their phones.

With just over 300 days until the opening ceremony, the mayor and Olympic organizers have plenty of time to deal with the issue, but the fact is we won’t know if enough has been done until the sporting extravaganza actually kicks off.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
The iPhone 16 could wow us with a surprise camera upgrade
Close-up of the cameras on the iPhone 15 Pro Max.

It seems Apple is finally ready to play the megapixels game. After serving 12-megapixel camera arrays on its smartphones for a healthy few generations, Apple finally put a 48MP sensor on the iPhone 14 Pro pair. A year later, the entire iPhone 15 series got the same treatment.

According to industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, that momentum will continue with the iPhone 16 series. In an investor note, Kuo claims that the iPhone 16 Pro duo will get a new 48MP ultrawide-angle camera sensor — a big jump from the 12MP wide-angle snapper on the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro.

Read more
Your Android phone just got an update that could save your life
A person holding the OnePlus 11 and Google Pixel 8.

When you’re in an emergency, every second matters. And if you already have your health information on your phone, it’s going to be even easier than ever to get that critical information over to operators. Now, when you make an emergency call on your Android phone, your health information can be sent directly to emergency services when you call 911.

This new feature update is made possible due to Google partnering with RapidSOS to allow data from Android ELS (Emergency Location Service) to be given to emergency contacts and first responders. The type of data that we’re talking about is critical medical information that can save your life, such as blood type, emergency contacts, and severe allergies. This is all information that the user sets up and is stored locally on their Android device.

Read more
The OnePlus 12 could be one of 2024’s best Android phones
A photo of someone holding the white/silver OnePlus 12.

OnePlus has had a brilliant year thanks to some great devices. The OnePlus 11 emerged as a comeback in terms of value for money, with high-end features for just $699. It offered a big and bright display, good-quality cameras, excellent performance with clean software, and all-day battery life.

But it still had two omissions, which seem to be fixed by the OnePlus 12 that was unveiled in China today. If the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is anything similar to the Gen 2 in terms of efficiency, the OnePlus 12 could be one of 2024’s best Android phones.
A truly impressive camera system

Read more