Increased traffic to ruin viewing of England game?

By Jacqui Depares

With the World Cup in full swing, it seems only fitting to dedicate a few words to it on this blog.

Now, I confess, during a normal football season, you are hardly likely to find me glued to the TV screen watching a match.  The World Cup, however, is a completely different matter.  The other teams I can take or leave... but when England is on, I am there... (if of course sitting on an armchair in Balham counts as being ‘there’).

Now that was all well and good for the match last Saturday and dare I say it, the match tomorrow. But come Wednesday 23^rd, what will the supporters confined to the average working day do to watch the match at the rather inconvenient time of 3pm?

Well, some of us, like my Account Director Claire, have booked a strategic half day off.  Now that's dedication. For the less die-hard supporters out there, we're all going to be relying on the BBC website to do its bit and stream coverage live from South Africa in pristine quality. So, no missed goals, no unfortunately timed Toyota adverts, just the beautiful game streamed down to our humble PCs.  Should be simple enough, right?

Well, think again. According to internet service provider, Star, we’re going to see a 50% surge in internet traffic on Wednesday 23^rd June, so brace yourselves for some serious buffering people.  Blue Coat has also issued a similar warning, coupled with some depressing survey findings.  Apparently, 54% of IT managers believe that employees should be banned from watching games over fears of network congestion.  All I can say is, and I think I speak for all our office when I say this, thank goodness Mike King is not one of these people. 

So, I guess the proof will be in the pudding (or something a little more football related). Meat, pie, sausage rolls and all that, come on BBC.co.uk, please let us see a goal!

Comments

[Claire Ayles]

The half day off is justified - I was one of the people watching a car play football at the time Stevie G scored on Saturday, I can't risk another poor viewing experience - so it's good old fashioned TV for me; not iPlayer.

Interesting also that FIFA has today been criticised for not charging enough for online content http://v-net.tv/NewsDisplay.aspx?id=433. Apparently, we're all happy to pay more.

I'm not. Especially if, as Star predicts, we could get a rubbish online viewing experience next Wednesday afternoon.