IT A Challenge At Beijing 2008 Games – Lightning A Problem
20/08/2007 |
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The Beijing 2008 Summer Olympic Games will involve the widest adoption of broadband and mobility services in history, says Zhao Jidong, senior Vice President at China Netcom, the official fixed-line communication service provider for the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Zhao said it will be a challenging task to meet the varied communication needs of more than 25,000 media representatives and millions of visitors, athletes and staff members for the 18-day event. The telecom infrastructure of the Beijing Games is expected to be the most complex and largest ever.
The Games will involve 37 venues of which 31 are in Beijing. Events will also be held in six cities outside Beijing. Industry watchers say that covering so many scattered venues requires a comprehensive and flexible telecom infrastructure, as well as the deployment of both fixed and wireless technologies.
Zhao says to meet the challenge China Netcom has invested millions of dollars in upgrading and expanding its optical network, transmission network, switch network and data network over the past few years.
The company has set up a dedicated “VIP” network to provide high-speed Internet connections for media, hotel and organizers, as well as a new service which will allow visitors in media centres and all Olympic venues to access the Internet with an IC card without needing to input passwords.
Meanwhile state media reported Friday that Chinese meteorologists have warned that the site of most venues for the Games could suffer a high number of lightning strikes after the Games begin. So far this year lightning has killed 499 people in China, nearly 200 more than in the same period last year.
In an academic paper submitted Thursday to an international conference, Guo Hu, head of the Beijing Meteorological Observatory and fellow researcher Xiong Yajun said they had studied Beijing lightning data from 1995 to 2005 – and the Haidian district where most of the 31 venues are located was most heavily hit. Some of the venues are in the open air.
Experts say compared with other parts in north China, Beijing was more likely to be hit by thunderstorms and lightning “due to its geographical and meteorological conditions”.
(Source: Gamesbids.com)
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