Olympic fail: Officials tell crowd not to tweet or text during events

Olympic committee organizers are blaming the crowds of people in attendance for failed television coverage of the cycling event today.

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So, what exactly did these fans do that was so wrong? They excitedly tweeted and sent text messages during the race, which apparently overloaded the wireless networks, reports Reuters. As a result, TV commentators were unable to give their audience correct placement of cyclists during the race or their finishing times.

“From my understanding, One network was oversubscribed, and OBS (Olympic Broadcasting Services) are trying to spread the load to other providers,” IOC Communications Director Mark Adams told The Guardian. “We don’t want to stop people engaging in this by social media but perhaps they might consider only sending urgent updates.”

Regardless of how it happened, I think it’s pretty much impossible to tell a crowd of excited sports fans to stop communicating with  friends not at the event.

The network failure, however, isn’t a complete shock. U.K communications regulatory body Ofcom predicted that mobile data usage would double during the games, and previously said it was rolling out a plan to ensure sufficient spectrum was available deal with any congestion. But obviously, they didn’t do nearly enough.

I’d suspect more network failure news to come before the event officially end. We’re only two days into the games, with the good part of two weeks left to go.

Cyclists photo via Valeria73 / Shutterstock