The World Cup isn’t just a sporting event; it’s an IT event
The total data traffic on the IT networks of the FIFA World Cup in Brazil has already surpassed 32 terabytes in 10 days, according to the event’s internet and communications provider Oi – and we’re not even halfway through the tournament.
That 32 terabytes represents the total volume of data traversing the IT networks used by FIFA, the 32 teams playing and the 20,000 international journalists covering the event in 12 stadiums and other broadcast sites within Brazil. It doesn’t even count the reams of photos, videos and social media posts coming from millions of fans using public Wi-Fi and mobile data networks in and around the stadium.
“The first 10 days of the World Cup saw an amount of data equivalent to 171 Super Bowls per day transmitted on the Oi networks for FIFA,” Oi said in a statement.
Oi, Brazil’s largest telecommunications provider, claims IT traffic has already surpassed the IT traffic in the entire 2010 World Cup in South Africa, and it’s well on its way to pass the other major international sporting event of the year, the Sochi Winter Olympics, which saw 34 TBs consumed in 17 days.
Much of the increased consumption comes from multiple connections per user. Oi said that 152,000 different devices were connected to Oi’s media-only Wi-Fi networks in the tournaments 12 stadiums over those 10 days. That works out to b 7.6 devices per journalist.
Image copyright EKS/Shutterstock.
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