Will Brit Royal wedding crash the mobile networks?

Rating: GoMo News does its bit to help

With any major event – like the Womad music festival, for example – you’re going to have large numbers of people congregated in a small area where there are normally only a few masts. The forthcoming wedding of Britain’s Prince William to Kate Price Middleton, is going to cause mega headaches. Luckily, at least one of the UK’s four major operators – o2 -has been planning ahead for some time. If you want to plan ahead as well, you might want to work out how to stream TV coverage to your handset. Or you might want to download mxData ‘s Tube Map app in time to avoid the congestion on London’s streets.Actually, the figures put out by O2 in its blog here make very interesting reading. It reckons an extra 300,000 O2 subscribers will come flooding into the capital.

By comparison, the 2011 London Marathon saw 43,333 more O2 customers flood in Central London than usual with 155 cells in use.

The Royal wedding will see six times as many O2 customers in town and 283 cells in use.

Significantly, O2′s got one major advantage over its competitors in London.

It’s the only UK operator using the 900 MHz spectrum for 3G data in the capital, which means it has more capacity for O2 customers to enjoy.

So if you want to stream the TV coverage to your handset or to share your Royal wedding video clip over a system such as Qik, it looks like O2 might be your best bet.

Plus, of course, you’d better ensure you’ve got the right app on your handset.

Those with iPhones have long enjoyed the ability to watch TV via the BBC iPlayer, although previously Vodafone has reputed begged its subscribers to use Wi-Fi rather than 3G to do so.

The situation is worst for those with Android handsets because the official iPlayer app uses Adobe Flash to handle streaming (and you might need to download the Flash Player 10.1 version).

So only those with Android v 2.2 (Froyo) handsets will be able to load up the official BBC app to watch the Royal Wedding live on their handsets.

Being something of a patriot, this particular GoMo News hack decided to download a Royal Wedding app which the UK’s ITN has produced and distributed exclusively through Getjar here.

For some reason this app didn’t work on either of our Android handsets so we weren’t able to view classic videos such as ‘the Royal pizza unveiled’. Shame

Talking of downloads it might be an idea to download mxData’s Tube Map for free right now. It works on most iPhones, Androids, Nokias and Blackberries.

The app allows users to plan their journey and access live information about the tube network.

However, mxData’s CEO, David James, advised his users to “Check for live updates of delays and overcrowding before you head to the capital.”

The company also advises trying to use Tube stations further off the Royal route such as Sloane Square, Waterloo and Leicester Square.

Finally, some advice for out cousins in Canada and North America from Now Public which points out that non-Brits probably won’t get access to the live BBC stream bbc.co.uk/royalwedding.

You could try the Royals.ca. However, the blog here points out that BBC North America, TLC and CNN will probably provide good enough coverage of the event. Canada’s CTV should also do so.

The bottom line is don’t plan to send a vital SMS, email or video clock this Friday [29th April] between 11 am and Noon BST (British Summer Time).

Oh and bad luck to News360 which will be releasing an iPad update
at 9am PT which is around five hours too late for the wedding.

Sad, because the update will feature video news segments in addition to photos that are already accompanying stories in top news, topical and custom newsfeeds. Would have been ideal, really.