Fifa voices doubts on IT for 2010 World Cup

South African infrastructure could prove a challenge, says Fifa

Fifa has started preparations for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, but has expressed concerns that the country’s IT infrastructure is inadequate in its present state.

Football governing body Fifa is hoping to reuse large parts of the technology infrastructure from this month’s tournament in Germany, but says lack of bandwidth could make it difficult to run accreditation, event management and football results systems in the same way.

The organising group is working with IT partners Avaya, Toshiba and Deutsche Telekom at the Germany-hosted tournament to ensure that 50,000 media and operations staff are able to access key applications over a converged voice and data network.

But Peter Meyer, head of IT at Fifa, says the current lack of bandwidth in South Africa may make it hard to create a similar infrastructure to that in Germany, which is hosting business applications at a central data centre.

‘Before these games are over we are already starting work on the next World Cup,’ said Meyer. ‘I was in South Africa a few weeks ago and the connectivity, especially when contacting the rest of the world, is quite thin.’

Meyer says South Africa’s technology could advance significantly over the next few years, and that a liberalisation of the telecoms market in the country is already under way.

Katja Ruud, research director at analyst Gartner, agrees that existing South African technology is insufficient for World Cup operations, but says the market is developing. ‘It is an emerging technology market, but this must have been taken into consideration when applying for the World Cup,’ she said.

The South African organising committee may end up relying more on mobile communications technologies rather than broadband, says Ruud.

‘It was the same with the Athens Olympics: people expected it to fail but the organisers managed well,’ she said.

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