Sports fans attending the London Olympics have been asked to avoid unnecessary text messages and tweets during events to prevent an overload of the data networks, which affects television coverage. Commentators in Saturday's men's cycling road race were unable to tell viewers how far the leaders were ahead of the pack, because data could not get through from the GPS tracking systems installed on the cycles. Many inadvertently made matters worse by venting their anger on Twitter at the lack of information, further straining the infrastructure.

An International Olympic Committee (IOC) spokesman said the network problem had been caused by the messages sent by the hundreds of thousands of fans who lined the streets to cheer on the British team. "Of course, if you want to send something, we are not going to say 'Don't, you can't do it', and we would certainly never prevent people", he said. "It's just - if it's not an urgent, urgent one, please kind of take it easy". Other events due to take place on London's roads include the men's and women's marathon and triathlon.

An explosion in the use of mobile phones to access the internet and share photos and videos has made London 2012 the first true "social media games", but also placed immense pressure on data networks. Mobile operators and infrastructure companies had said that they expected to be able to meet the extra demand, but obviously these events have shown otherwise.

The IOC spokesman added that it appeared the problem lay with oversubscription on one particular unnamed network, and talks had taken place in an attempt to share more of the data load. He conceded that asking people not to send messages at key moments "may not have an awful lot of effect".

Source: Reuters

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