According to the International Olympic Committee, tweets and messages sent by Londoners disrupted coverage of the recent men’s cycling road race.
Reuters reports that the sudden spike in data apparently caused a network outage which blocked GPS navigation satellite system.
The network outage meant that commentators were unable to receive timing information during the men’s cycling road race.
An IOC spokesperson advised Londoners to avoid sending text messages and tweets during events if they are not urgent to avoid an overloaded network.
"Of course, if you want to send something, we are not going to say ‘don’t, you can’t do it’, and we would certainly never prevent people," said an IOC spokesperson. "It’s just, if it’s not an urgent, urgent one, please kind of take it easy. We don’t want people to stop engaging in social media but we are asking to see if people can send by other means."
IOC says they are working to fix the network problem. According to Reuters the problem may be an "oversubscription" of a particular network.
"It’s mainly a technical issue with the network," said the IOC spokesperson. "It’s a network issue, and it is that which we are working on."
See also O2: Network outage nothing to do with Olympic upgrades
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