Olympic Committee Bans Wi-Fi Hotspots
Leave your 3G dongle at home.
London may have just gotten itself some pretty significant WiFi coverage, but it looks like it's not all sunshine and connectivity inside the Olympic venues. The International Olympic Committee has revealed that mobile hotspots are banned from this year's Olympics. While you are permitted to use a your smartphone or tablet inside the venues, personal or private access points, along with 3G hubs, are not allowed.
TechCrunch reports that the news follows hot on the heels of the announcement that Londonders (or indeed anyone else attending the games, won't be able to share photos or videos of their experiences on social networks. According to the site, any ticket holder with images, video, and sound recordings of the Games cannot use the content for anything other than private and domestic purposes. This extends to licensing, broadcasting, or publishing the content either via social networking sites, or the internet in general. Yikes.
Along with your own personal WiFi hotspot or 3G hub, you also won't be allowed to carry liquids, aerosols, or gels in quantities greater than 100ml; alcohol; tents, placards, spray paint; walkie-talkies, phone jammers or radio scanners; laser pointers or strobe lights; any item too large to be electronically screened; bikes; pets or other animals; any type of blade, knife or offensive weapons including blades and personal protection sprays; firearms; fireworks/explosives of any kind; controlled drugs; or items that resemble prohibited items such as gun replicas.
London 2012 also has a list of restricted items to go along with its restricted items. This includes any objects or clothing bearing political statements or "overt commercial identification intended for 'ambush marketing'" as well as large flags; over-sized hats; golf umbrellas; large photographic equipment measuring over 30cm; excessive amounts of food; balls, rackets, frisbees or other projectiles; noisemakers, such as air horns, whistles, klaxons and vuvuzelas; or flags of countries not participating in the Games (excluding the flags of nations under the umbrella of a participating country).
While it would likely be fairly easy to prevent people from bringing a lot of the above into the venues, we imagine it'll be a lot more difficult to keep people from setting up their own hotspots and even more difficult to prevent the posting of content to Facebook, Twitter, and other sites.
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Jane McEntegart is a writer, editor, and marketing communications professional with 17 years of experience in the technology industry. She has written about a wide range of technology topics, including smartphones, tablets, and game consoles. Her articles have been published in Tom's Guide, Tom's Hardware, MobileSyrup, and Edge Up.
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ewood the olympic committee needs to be put back in its place. sounds like a bunch of old people are making rules because they dont understand technology and are therefor scared of it...Reply -
kossmalta Is this the Olympic for people or corporations? If Brits didn't want to make something for the whole world and mostly themselves as hosts why give it to them?Reply
You know it was the Greeks that invented those things, right? It wasn't the bankers (greek or not) either...
Perhaps they knew better how to make Olympics, but we still felt the need to 'optimize' them .... FTS! -
gamara This is the IOC. The ones that chose London as the site. They have an obligation to the groups that paid large sums of money to get exclusivity to broadcast the events (NBC) and as there is so much to air, as well as a 6+ hr time difference, there will be a fair amount of delayed airing that they are trying to keep fresh. They could run a bunch of Cisco Aironet AP's with a WLC and have it all configured to jam rogue AP's.Reply -
hoofhearted Why note make everyone have regulation haircuts, wear uniforms, and not be allowed to express any emotion whatsoever.Reply
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bigdragon I thought the Olympic games were supposed to be open and inclusive. I thought it was a world showcase of athletes, countries, and communities. The list of banned items is so large here they might as well convert to a list of acceptable items. I'm really shocked by that social media blackout thing in particular. What's next? Are they going to ban Android phones or block people on non-sponsoring carriers from using their devices? They already do this with credit cards.Reply
I don't like what the Olympics has become. -
tului gamaraThis is the IOC. The ones that chose London as the site. They have an obligation to the groups that paid large sums of money to get exclusivity to broadcast the events (NBC) and as there is so much to air, as well as a 6+ hr time difference, there will be a fair amount of delayed airing that they are trying to keep fresh. They could run a bunch of Cisco Aironet AP's with a WLC and have it all configured to jam rogue AP's.The money ruins it in my opinion. Should be given to all networks free. *sigh*Reply -
womble Well I generally always enjoy the games but all the megacorp sponsorship and stuff is getting to be a bit of a turn off. Lord knows how on earth we ended up winning the bid, there can't be many countries we haven't honked off these past few years.Reply
I suspect that there are a good portion of athletes and the general populace that would support the notion of having the games in their spiritual home of Greece. Slightly toned down and cutting some of the peripheral 'me too, me too' sports. Difficult to draw a line I know, but football and stuff?