BT makes changes to deliver 2012 Olympics in time

BT is preparing for 2012

BT is having to change the way it works to meet the unique demands of delivering the telecommunications to support the London 2012 Olympics.

Speaking at the Communications Management Association (CMA) conference yesterday, BT's director for the London 2012 delivery programme, Stuart Hill, said he was having to re-engineer some of BT's processes to meet its commitments.

BT's network infrastructure will have to support a data rate out of the main Olympic arena of 48Gbit/s. To handle this traffic volume, Hill said BT will be using only tried and tested technology, but will have duplicate local area networks (LANs) and routing infrastructure to cope with outages.

But the standard process for service provision from BT had to undergo radical change for the Games.

"I've had to re-engineer some of BT's processes to cope with what we're having to do to keep to the timeline," said Hill.

"But the Olympics' service specifications and product portfolios will be delivered this June."

Hill said network infrastructure serving the event would have extra protection, with physical security at all the telephone exchanges serving the Games and every manhole cover taped over and secured. BT will be using 4,500km of optical fibre to connect the arena to local exchanges and there will be 1,000 wireless access points located around the site.

Between 800 and 900 people on the main site and at other locations hosting Olympic events will be available to Hill between 27 July and 12 August 2012 to make sure the communications infrastructure holds up.

Hill said he and his team will be "putting reliability ahead of heroics, and we'll freeze the technology to be used two years before the games start".

"If a butterfly flaps its wings in Weymouth [home to the Olympic sailing competitions], I want to know about it," he said.

Hill will be sending a team to monitor the Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010.

"I'll be poaching people from Vancouver – of course I will, I reckon 70 per cent of the knowledge acquired by their team will be transferable to the challenges we'll have in London," he said.