All hail London's Olympic Wi-Fi Police!

[#1]

In the latest episode of 'laugh at LOCOG protecting sponsors' commercial interests,' we learn that the games organizers have employed a number of Wi-Fi police officers. Their job is to seek out mobile Wi-Fi hotspots and prevent their use.

It's alleged that the reason is to protect BT's revenue: BT, a games sponsor, has the exclusive right to operate Wi-Fi hotspots within the Olympic areas. However, officials claim the reason is to "prevent interference."

Those wishing to avoid paying through the nose -- an eye-watering £6 for 90 minutes -- might try to switch on the Wi-Fi hotspot feature on their smartphones. But watch out for the Wi-Fi police (pictured).

Picture credit: Sadao Turner [image edited to protect the employee's privacy]

Also: what a great publicity coup for Rohde & Schwarz and its line of directional antennae, eh? Sadly, the obsolete HE200 model LOCOG is using only goes up to 3GHz, so if your hotspot can be restricted to using the 5GHz band, do that!
 

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Richi Jennings , editor of Input Output UK, is also an independent analyst, specializing in blogging, email, spam, security, and other technology topics. His writing has won ASBPE and Neal awards. You can encircle him at +richi, follow him as @richi on Twitter, pretend to be his friend at Facebook.com/richij or just use boring old email: io@richij.com.

[#2]

You've got to be kidding me... What a load.

[#3]

So nice to see government and corporations working together to make life better for everyone.

[#4]

From where I'm sitting I'd give them the benefit of the doubt & believe that interference is the main reason. I've been at conferences where there were so many mobile hotspots that they swamped out the official ones. With so many people in the stadia I'd be worried. At home I check which channels my neighbours are on and pick a quiet one. If they only sold tickets to geeks they could maybe ask everyone to switch to just a few channels to separate the official and unofficial, but that's not really practical in this reality. I hope the guy is either just surveying, or politely reminding people to switch off, and isn't backed by G4S louts.

[#5]

Ah, Martin, you're no fun ;-)

[#6]

I'll give 'em this: I haven't been able to find any bootleg Olympic video coverage online. So I'm just skipping it. Who the ** cares about a bunch of professional athletes who are all staying just under the cheating radar?

[#7]

Ron, you're obviously not looking hard enough ;-)

[#8]

Richi, my motivation to dig deeper is not real high. If I wanted to watch tainted athletes flaunting themselves in an organization that is powerless to stop them, there's always Major League Baseball ;-)

[#9]

Well, it wouldn't be fair if random hotspots prevented real people using the expensive WiFi they've paid for.

On the other hand, I am perfectly willing to accept money for any clumsy snapshots I might take, as payback for years of BS from G4s. Photography is not a crime, and I'm pretty sure the Olympic Park isn't a Prohibited Place under section 3 of the Official Secrets Act, even though the army are there now! (See, I choose what to rant about ;-)

[#10]

More Olympic control feakery. By jove, I do believe they're setting a new Olympics record there!

[#11]

If ever OMG had a legitimate use, this is it. 

[#12]

Empty streets, Empty Hotels...........just who's Olympics is this

[#13]

A little fact-checking would have confirmed that this guy has nothing to do with WiFi. He's monitoring broadcasters' use of frequencies to make sure te various camera crews don't disrupt each other. Other blogs managed to ask LOCOG and get a clarification on this. Why couldn't you? I expected better from HP.

[#14]

Well, no, Ben. You've been fed a half-truth.

This is JFMG, acting o/b/o OFCOM by the powers vested in them under The Wireless Telegraphy Act 2006. These guys aren't just policing WC, but also TB and all other spectrum allocations -- both PMSE and unlicensed.

And your criticism that we didn't present LOCOG's "preventing interference" spin is odd, seeing as we in fact did.  We just didn't blindly believe it.

[#15]

It's not their 'spin' I'm criticising you for disbelieveing. It's the direct quotes others have from LOCOG and OFCOM that specifically say they aren't monitoring WiFi: www.pocket-lint.com/news/46792/wifi-police-at-olympic-games-n

Having the option to do-so doesn't mean they are.

[#16]

Thanks; well aware of the official statements, I just don't choose to accept them at face value. Let's agree to disagree.

[#17]

Geez, Ben Smith, I'd trust that site about as much as I'd trust the official ones of the RIAA and the MPAA. Or the North Korea homepage.@_o

[#18]

To be fair, Ben's point isn't that Pocket Lint is a trustworthy, high-functioning journalistic site. It's that LOCOG made a statement that I didn't report word-for-word. In an op/ed piece such as this, it's what I believe that gets written about, not what PR people say. I leave that to for news reportage articles.