Olympic Committee Wants Fans To Stop Tweeting, Texting

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has asked fans attending Olympic events to slow down or stop tweeting all together. The IOC made its request because a large amount of mobile use is causing major data connection issues.

The overloaded network caused major problems for men’s road cycling coverage on Saturday as problems with an overloaded GPS communications network lost vital information about the race and left commentators unable to provide viewers race updates.

In making its request the IOC said:

“Of course, if you want to send something, we are not going to say ‘you can’t do it’, and we would certainly never prevent people. It’s just, if it’s not an urgent, urgent one, please kind of take it easy.”

The Olympics committee says tweeting and texting is to blame because location-based services clog up GPS networks and data networks which in turn stops the free flow of data needed to keep crowds of fans updated.

Ironically it was Twitter that voiced the disappointment of fans who were expecting better coverage of the men’s cycling event.

This is not the first we have heard of network congestion warnings at the 2012 London Olympics, London’s mayor warned of the possibility that this type of network congestion could occur.

In the meantime data cables were laid in most areas of Olympic Park which means satellite venues are most likely to experience issues.