The journey

Our involvement with London 2012 began long before the bid had been won.

One of the key factors which decided the bid in London’s favour was an inspiring and emotional commitment to the world’s youth. Realising the potential of young people is something we’re passionate about, and we believe our support helped swing the result London’s way.

We backed the London bid from the beginning because we saw the transformational value of bringing the 2012 Games to London. In 2004 we rolled up our sleeves and put a great deal of work into the bid’s technology section, to show what we could do to bring the Games to the world.

As well as technical support we were also able to offer practical help. When the evaluation team visited London in 2005, we supported the London bid team with innovative communications networks, products and services. Later that year we opened our Singapore offices to the London bid team, headed by Seb Coe.

The bid was finally won on July 6^th 2005, and a year later a competitive pitch was launched to appoint the Games’ communications provider. Thanks to our expertise and the efforts of our people, we won the role. And that’s when the real work began.

To start with, in 2008 we had technical teams in Beijing to learn from the Games as they happened. With 94 venues to cover in 2012 we’re going to need to tap into all the learning we can.

This year we’re working on the detailed design for the communications infrastructure. In March we completed the high level solution design. This is the overall architecture of the communications network that BT is delivering for 2012 which will connect all the key venues. As roads and venues are starting to be built, we’ll be busy laying up to 4,500 kilometres of cable and installing around 80,000 ports to make sure everyone stays connected.

A sailing event in Weymouth in 2010 will be an early demonstration of our capability. By this time we should be testing our powers of integration bringing 16,000 fixed handsets, 14,000 mobiles, 400 wireless access points and a whole range of cable access TV and LAN networks together.

There’ll be more testing in 2011 with a series of summer events designed to make sure there are no hitches when the Games begin.

Needless to say 2012 will be flat out. By the end we estimate that we’ll have spent 632,000 man hours helping to make London 2012 an event to remember. And the Paralympic Games follow shortly after the Olympic Games, there will be no let up on our resources until the end of September.

Even when the final firework has exploded and the last spectator has drifted away, we’ll have work to do. The next Games will be on the horizon for another communications provider, and we’ll be doing all we can to make sure theirs is a success by telling them everything we’ve learned.