Wireless Data Roaming Wins Gold During Beijing Olympics
With athletes and sports fans pouring in from all over the world to attend the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, wireless data roaming turned in a gold medal performance according to data released today from data roaming exchange provider, Aicent. Data from Aicent’s roaming eXchange services shows a surge in wireless data roaming traffic exceeding 40 percent over the same period of days the month before. This increase in roaming traffic resulted in more than 332 GB of data being exchanged between 225 mobile operators in 106 different countries on the Aicent network.
The top twelve countries and territories for roaming traffic during this period were the United States, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, France, Spain, Macau, Singapore, Finland, Netherlands, Germany and the UK.
Aicent analyzed data from its network collected from Friday, August 8 - the day of the Olympic opening ceremonies - through the closing ceremonies on Sunday, August 24 and compared them to data collected from the same dates in July. When compared to data collected during the same period in 2007, wireless roaming traffic increased 70 percent.
Wireless operators were able to take advantage of Aicent’s GPRS Roaming eXchange (GRX) and CDMA Roaming eXchange (CRX) services.
As the surge in traffic in China demonstrates, Aicent’s technology lets mobile operators support rapidly growing mobile data services for an increasingly mobile user population that often needs to use services on the networks of more than one provider. Aicent’s eXchange services helped visitors to the Beijing Olympics enjoy the same wireless data experience they have come to expect in their home countries while they were visiting in China.
“Because we live in a global society, it is imperative for wireless service providers to allow their roaming subscribers to bring their personalized mobile broadband experience with them,” said Hugh Fletcher, director of business development. “This anticipated increase in wireless data traffic across so many different international networks shows that the use of data services has reached the tipping point globally. The Beijing Olympics has demonstrated that the entire world is depending more on wireless data. Aicent will leverage this experience for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver and the 2012 Olympics in London, which will no doubt include data roaming on emerging 4G networks.”
Posted to the site on 27th August 2008
