“Take the simple idea of a fan attending a game in one of the 10 stadias, he/she records a photo or video stream of the game on a mobile device and sends it by MMS to friends and family, or uploads it to popular social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter,” says Magnus Mchunguzi, director at Ericsson South Africa.

 

“Hundreds of thousands of fans have descended on South African soil to cheer on their teams. As a result, an increase in chat and text communications within countries can be seen as fans communicate this excitement with their friends and family back home. Additionally, while photo-messaging is not new, an event such as this simulates a dramatic rise in usage as fans discuss and share pictures of the latest news from South Africa.”

 

With an expected half a million soccer fans stepping onto South African soil, local operators have invested billions of rands in the past two years in additional capacity for growing demand and in preparation for the event, ensuring visitors experience world-class communication and multi-media capabilities at all high traffic venues across the country.

 

“Spectacular goals, shock results, significant incidents and the latest standings will be debated daily in hundreds of millions of homes and workplaces across the five continents,” concludes Mchunguzi. “With 40% of the world’s mobile calls passing through our networks, Ericsson, will certainly play its part in aiding that debate and satisfy the desires of soccer fanatics through a range of fixed and mobile offerings with all the 'need to know' information as it happens.”

 

This is echoed by MTN's confirmation earlier this week that it experienced an unusually high demand on its network surrounding the opening match of the World Cup on the 11th of June. Nonetheless, the provider was still able to offer 100% uptime to MTN users.