Pigeons that flew over the Olympics Games village

BANGALORE, INDIA: Only the other day we heard how Twitteratis, who were busy tweeting from the London Olympics 2012 venue, oblivious of the amount of bandwidth they were guzzling down in this process, literally brought the Games' live coverage to a halt. And, that prompted the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to request fans to tweet from the Olympics venue only if 'urgent'.

A report on CNET says users sent about 10 million tweets during the opening ceremonies alone. This despite spectators being restricted from carrying 3G data equipment to the venue.

The nine venues of the Olympic Park can hold a total of 1,60,000 spectators, which can soar up to even 3,00,000 during peak time producing over 10 Gigabyte of web traffic.

There are millions accessing the Games via live streaming sites, YouTube, social media websites, mobile applications etc. Over 1,500 WiFi hotspots have been installed and over 30 mobile phone masts have been fitted across the 2,000 square metre Olympic Park to cater to over eight billion devices which are expected to connect. There is a burst of information via myriad channels.

Now, roll back to the Olympics Games held before the birth of Christ, when pigeons were used to disseminate information.

This is one of the interesting facts from an infographic, titled 'London Calling: Mobility & the Olympic Games', created by network solutions company AcmePacket, that traces the history of communication statistics in Olympics Games.

During the first Games, that was held from 700 BC-300 AD, homing pigeons were used to carry information. A report says that Roman Emperor Theodosius I had banned the Olympics in a bid to enforce Christianity as a state religion in 384 A.D.

Pigeons gave way to wireless telegraphs by 1896, which marked the first modern-day Olympics. Another 30 years down the line saw the onset of radio broadcast of the Games.

The first live coverage of Olympics started in 1936, however, only two states in Germany, Berlin and Potsdam, got to watch it then. It took another 24 years, in 1964, for the Olympics to be broadcast worldwide. Olympics Games in Tokyo was the first to be broadcast across the Pacific Ocean using a communication satellite.

The 1996 Atlanta Olympics is marked as the first Internet Olympics, as it had its own  Web page. About 1,000 computers, 23,000 fixed lines, telephone devices and 9,000 mobile were used in the 2004 Athens Games to carry out the coverage.

Coming to the present, ACME estimates that the worldwide mobile traffic will increase by 211 per cent during the 2012 Olympics Games in London. And by 2016 there will be over 10 billion mobile connected devices in the world, even exceeding its population. Videos will comprise for over 70 per cent of mobile traffic and tablets will be 10 per cent of global mobile data traffic, it adds. Well, watch out Olympics Committee, you have a tough game in hand.