F5 Networks has claimed 3G and Wi-Fi speeds improved "considerably" during the London 2012 Olympic Games, despite the millions of people logging on at the same time.
The research looked at traffic at 12 of the biggest Olympic Game hotspots, including Wembley Stadium, Hyde Park, Greenwich and of course the Olympic Park in Stratford, East London. It compared download speeds during a four-week period before and during the games.
According to F5 Networks Wi-Fi hotspot speeds increased from 7.81 Mb/s before the Games to 9.33 Mb/s during. Speeds over a 3G connection also went up, from 0.41Mb/s to 0.64 Mb/s.
In the Olympic Park in Stratford, home to the 80,000-seater Olympic Stadium as well as many other venues, the speeds improved, as they did around Wembley, Kings Cross, Waterloo/Southwark and other parts of Central London. Only the area around Paddington and St John’s Wood, which include Lord’s cricket ground, and Greenwich saw a decrease in speeds.
Nathan Pearce, product manager EMEA, F5 Networks, praised operators for the way they managed their infrastructure during the Games.
"Before the games most people had written the operators off, expecting them to crumble under the pressure of additional traffic. However, these findings clearly show that London passed yet another big test during the games, improving network speeds across nine of the twelve sites tested."
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Pearce added that the infrastructure put in place for the Games should provide a good legacy.
"Hopefully this is a sign of things to come in the mobile space and something that operators continue to build on to service the ever-growing demand for data on the go. The Olympics and Paralympics have brought a lot of benefits to London and it is really refreshing to see that mobile hotspots have been made more readily available and hopefully will continue to be rolled out and improved after the games," he said.
"Whilst it is great to see that the Olympics has spurred operators on to improve their current service, hopefully they won’t pull the plug now the Olympics and Paralympics party is over," Pearce concluded.
More from CBR on the London 2012 Olympics:
Catching some air: What UK businesses can learn from the Olympics
How did the tech Olympics stack up?
Q&A: IOC Head of Social Media, Alex Huot
It will be ‘extremely hard’ to launch successful cyber attack on Olympics, says London 2012 CIO
