Virgin Media sees drop in broadband traffic during Olympics opening
Broadband traffic on Virgin Media's network dropped significantly last Friday (July 27th 2012) as customers gave their full concentration to the Olympic Games opening ceremony.
Speaking to Pocket-lint, the cable company revealed overall utilisation of its broadband infrastructure was similar to the previous week, but a fall of approximately 18 per cent was seen between 21:00 and 23:00 BST.
A major week-on-week decline was also recorded in usage of Virgin Media's next-generation TiVo entertainment service.
IP traffic from the TiVo set-top box's built-in broadband connection - used to deliver apps such as BBC iPlayer - slumped by 75 per cent from 21:00 to midnight.
However, the following day, usage of the TiVo service surged as people who missed the ceremony took advantage of its catch-up facilities.
From around 08:00 to midnight on Saturday, the TiVo IP attracted almost twice its normal volume of traffic.
According to the BBC, 1.7 million iPlayer requests for the ceremony were made over the weekend, including 925,000 on Saturday alone - a record for a single day.
The clip of James Bond escorting the Queen to the Games was viewed 640,000 times via the BBC's YouTube channel.
