A Challenge to Networks

By Brad

With the World Cup starting this week, Broadband Breakfast looks at the possible effect one of the world’s biggest sporting events could have on Internet Service Providers, specifically in Europe:

Subscribers can now view programming content over the internet and mobile networks in much higher definition than before, and that could generate enough traffic to bring down a network if fans in populous nations such as the United Kingdom and Germany watch matches in large numbers that way. A single user could easily consume 400 megabytes of data viewing a match via mobile phone, which leaves wireless operators unsure of how much additional traffic they will actually get thanks to the World Cup.

There is the potential for significant revenue from data downloads, but there’s also the danger that heavily trafficked networks could collapse or deliver poor performance with the risk of triggering consumer defections.