With the Olympics just around the corner network providers have been worried about the potential increase in traffic as more of the games will be consumed over IP than ever before. As an example just the tennis match with Djokovic and Murray today saw traffic on the Fluidata network (business centric) grow by 25% as people logged onto iPlayer to watch. As a large proportion of the UK will be in the office while the Olympics are on this kind of increase in traffic will be excessive as people will not only follow the games from their desktop, but also watch a wide range of different games at the same time.
Estimates currently put traffic levels at a sustained average of 20 – 30% above normal during the games, but as today shows I think the average will be a lot higher. It also shows that it won’t just be the consumer networks suffering but also business providers who are going to have to work hard to ensure customers receive enough bandwidth for ‘business as usual’ activities as well as employees wanting to keep informed. One thing is for certain is that if the networks cope, nobody will mention it, but if they fail it will make headline news.
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