Posts Tagged ‘Olympics’

China Mobile says half a million phone calls were made during Olympic Ceremonies

Thursday, August 28th, 2008

You’re in the fourth largest country in the world, sitting in a stadium filled with thousands of people present there to watch some of the most spectacular shows and acts ever made, what do you do? I, for one, would have my eyes glued to the performers. But that’s not what the 24,000 users, present at the closing ceremony, did. These users, in the middle of the performances, chose to use their cellphones, reports Cellular News.

Olympic 2008 closing ceremony

A total of over 490,000 phone calls were made on the country’s GSM network, in and around the Beijing National Stadium, on the eve of the Opening and Closing ceremonies for Olympics. Before you start making remarks about the Chinese, the report goes on to mention that 20,000 of the total users were international roaming service users. Believable? 

Surprisingly, a spokesperson for China Mobile went on to reveal that they achieved 100 percent call connection rate and only around 0.27 percent of the calls were dropped.

The company also gifted 15,000 phones to Olympic officials.

Seriously underwhelmed by BBC’s Olympics text service

Wednesday, August 13th, 2008

Uploaded - 12 Aug 2008-1

As Rob commented earlier, the BBC’s Olympics text service looked promising.

I was looking forward to frequent text messages across the business day about plucky British chappies and ladies risking all for blighty and spectacularly failing. We’re very good at screwing up and coming last here in the UK. Or nailing the competition to the wall. It seems to be very binary.

Instead though, I’ve been getting television promotion alerts.

Hardly useful.

“Watch Nicole Cooke try and win something at 10am,” the message said. Something like that.

Ok.

So I wasn’t able to do that.

Where’s the update? Did she win? Did she fail with the pluckiness of a good old Britisher? What happened?

Almost helpful.

Failed to qualify, Olympics text service could do better

Wednesday, August 13th, 2008

I’m a little frustrated by some of the technology coming out of the Olympics.

I’ve loved watching Phelps’ gold rush, Cooke’s cycling gold was equally amazing to witness and, being a rowing nut, I’ve not moved from the TV whilst these events are on. But, some of the interactive services suck royally.

Aside from screaming at the internet and TV when a mistake meant the lightweight women’s double race, scheduled to be shown, was replaced on both with sailing – made all the worse by a friend competing in it – I’ve been most disappointed by the Beeb’s text service to alert you to the top events.

So far I’ve had the sum total of zero texts to alert me that Cooke could be on for a gold in the road race cycling. Zero texts to alert me that men’s 4-, the flagship boat, is about to race. And zero texts to suggest that a swimming gold was being contested.

I’ve registered twice and am getting particularly fed up. How hard could it be to get this service sorted.

I’m also slightly annoyed that AOL has ajusted the medal table to put the US above China (it’s counting medals, not gold medals as all other charts do). i’m now actually routing for China over the US in everything except the three remaining events in which Phelps is swimming. But that’s beside the point.

I’m off to Beijing soon… what should I take?

Monday, August 11th, 2008

Img214070916Once this month’s warm-up event in Beijing is tidied away some of the most exciting sport you’ll see will be coming to you from Beijing… the Paralympic element of the 29th Olimpiad.  Your intrepid reporter will be with Team GB’s medal-winning wheelchair basketball team reporting live – I’ll also try to give you the low-down on  the other sports going on.

However, right now the question is what mobile tech should I take to use and test?  On the list so far:

  • Truphone and Rebtel for cheap international calling
  • A local China Mobile SIM possibly with some mobile data
  • A SIMable chip so I can swap SIMs into any phones I like
  • iPhone for music and a simple Mandarin language course
  • Some offline maps with Olympic venue POI such as Garmin’s
  • An N82 for pictures
  • Several Proporta backup batteries
  • A netbook for mobile blogging (which one?)
  • The Macbook Air for proper computing
  • A decent gadget bag – something that doesn’t scream ‘laptop’!
  • Some high quality headphones for the flights – perhaps Entymotics?

Any other recommendations / options?  Have you been to China and what was useful / rubbish?

Google Olympics overload straight to your mobile

Monday, August 11th, 2008

Are you heartily sick of the Olympics yet? If you can’t wait to see more of men and women in Lycra trying to beat their personal bests and the random drug testing, the Google is ready to help you do it from your mobile phone.

The search giant has come up with a load of features designed for Olympics fans.

From Google’s mobile blog:

We’ve launched a new mobile search tool that gets you sport results, country medal count, and event schedules right at the top of your search results. Go to www.google.com on your phone and try a search for “swimming.”

Once the events have begun, you’ll be able to search for things like “gymnastics medals” or “Russia medal count” to get updated medal counts and rankings in your search results as well.

Handy for those who haven’t suffered Games overload yet.

3G available for the Olympics – if you buy a new phone

Monday, June 30th, 2008

If you’re planning on going over to Beijing for the Olympics then you might need to buy a new handset when you get there. It has been reported in the Wall Street Journal (here) that although China is planning to have 3G available to users, it will be based on the TD-SCDMA technology standard – which is not used by handsets sold outside of China.

To be honest if you are going to Beijing for the Olympics then I’ve got very little sympathy for you. I’m sure you’ll have an amazing experience and a lack of 3G will hardly register.

On a non-technology note, I wonder if Dwain Chambers will need to buy a new Chinese handset. Dwain is the UK’s highest profile drugs ‘cheat’ and he is trying to get his lifetime ban from the Olympics overturned. You can read more about it here.

Olympic 3G goes live with 15,000 free phones

Tuesday, April 29th, 2008

It looks like China really has done it: after seemingly never-ending delays, according to local news service Xinhua, China has now got its 3G service up and running in just a matter of months and yes, it will be ready for the influx of visitors for the Olympics later this year.

China Mobile is giving away 15,000 3G handsets to Olympics officials and 3 million yuan of call credit to boot, says Xinhua. They’ll be able to get the higer-speed TD-SCDMA connection in eight cities, five of which will be hosting the Olympics.

China Mobile first started testing the service back in April – it’s amazing that it will go from pilot to full launch within four months. Some people take that long to test an application, not an entire network. Or am I being too optimistic – is a short testing period likely to signify a network that hasn’t had all the gruelling testing it needs?

Chinese 3G kicks off on 1 April

Monday, March 31st, 2008

It looks like China’s 3G efforts are inching closer to reality. According to reports, China Mobile will kick off its trials of homegrown 3G standard TD-SCDMA in eight cities from 1 April: Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Shenyang, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Xiamen and Qinhuangdao.

Forbes says the operator will give away 20,000 TD-SCDMA mobile numbers free and will give way the same number of handsets for nothing, with other subscribers offered discounts of 100 to 200 yuan on their phones.

Things are certainly moving in the right direction for TD-SCDMA – and the Olympics looks like it’s figuring large in people’s minds: five out of the eight cities are Games venues.


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