The Hindu Business Line : Bend IT for Beckham!

The largest voice and data network ever deployed fuels the month-long, 12-city FIFA games. Anand Parthasarathy reports from Germany on the challenge of Wiring the World Cup.

A lot has changed, from the days when it was Beckenbauer's foot on the ball, to more recent days when the likes of Beckham and Ronaldinho do the decisive kicking. Technology has changed more than the aerodynamics of the football: It has transformed the means by which millions get to `participate' in the 64 matches of the most-watched sporting event in the world.

Starting with the last World Cup in 2002, the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) has entrusted key networking and communication tasks to experts from within the Information Technology industry. With a record 32 billion people worldwide slated to cumulatively watch the matches of the ongoing FIFA games in Germany, a secure converged communication backbone has become vital to the successful - and safe - staging of the matches. During a 31-day period, 3.1 million spectators will pack 12 stadiums, together with 15,000 members of the international media and an equal number of volunteers and officials.

The electronic nervous system to make this happen has emerged as the largest voice and data network ever deployed, geared to shift 15 trillion bytes of information, between the first kick-off in Munich on June 9 and the final whistle in Berlin exactly a month later on July 9. A single integrated infrastructure is being used to serve fans, journalists, players, officials and volunteers, linking venues, hotels, airports and railway stations across 12 German cities.

FIFA's official convergence communication provider is the US-based Avaya Inc which has partnered with German provider Deutsche Telekom and drawn on the expertise of eight member-companies of its own Developer Connection programme, including Extreme Networks, Citrix Systems, Juniper Networks, Aimetis Corp and Multitech, to deliver the FIFA communications backbone.

RFID chip in ticket

The use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips embedded in every ticket sold ensures that entry to the venues is both swift and secure. The same technology has reduced accreditation time for the media to less than 10 minutes. Combined with a simple colour coding system, the `smart' badges of media, officials and volunteers provide selective admissions to various parts of the stadium. Wireless Local Area Network (LAN), gateways and access points, coupled with RFID scanners at the public gates, ensured that at the opening match in Munich's Allianz Arena on June 9, over 60,000 spectators were securely provided entry in less than one hour.

Thanks to the availability of broadband, wireless and the Internet, real-time scores, statistics and play-by-play information is instantaneously transmitted. The data is also fed to Yahoo, which provides public access through its Web resources, and media feeds through its extranet. Possibly for the first time at an event of this size, pitch-side photographers are using wireless LAN to send pictures directly from their cameras to agencies and news desks around the world.

Ticking heart

A view of the FIFA IT command centre in Munich.

While every one of the 12 stadiums is fuelled by Avaya's basic communication sub-systems for accreditation, venue operations, and event management, the ticking heart of the overall FIFA IT event management system lies in an underground command centrea short distance away from the Munich stadium, which is almost as big as a football pitch.

As the largest player in the Internet Protocol (IP) telephony niche, Avaya has been able to usefully deploy one of its most recent solutions - a unified communications tool called Extension-to-Cellular, where a single number can reach media members and FIFA officials, whether they are available at the end of a landline, a mobile phone - or the virtual phone of a laptop or some other hand-held device. Citrix Systems has delivered Smart Phone applications to every fixed and mobile IP phone on the FIFA network, and integrated into the system an Express Directory that expedites dialling over 1 lakh personnel in the network. Juniper Networks, an IT player with a strong India connection, has created the firewalls, for access control and user authenticity.

Security unsurprisingly, looms as a major concern for the organisers, and going by past experience during the 2002 World Cup, and the 2003 Women's World Cup, Roger Jones, Avaya's Business Development Manager, expects his systems to be tested by Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. Till date he says, the FIFA network has remained proof against hackers. Ironically, security considerations have dictated that FIFA tear down its network as fast as it was put up. Avaya and their partners, who have taken over one year to carefully design FIFA's converged solution, had a window of just one month in which to erect it. Tearing it down will take just three days.

Says Michael Kelly, head of FIFA IT Solutions: "All communication infrastructures in a stadium will be shut down as soon as it goes off the event map, to prevent unauthorised access." That means the stadium in Leipzig will go off the network on June 24, after the last match at that venue is played.

Timely testing platform

In more ways than one, the World Cup has become a timely testing platform for tomorrow's communication technologies.

Aimetis Corp is trying out Artificial Intelligence software which tries to understand video in the same way that the human eye does. If a security threat is apprehended, FIFA personnel can scan eight hours of video history in 30 minutes. Avaya too used the event to `test drive' its new one-X IP phone family, which will be available later this year, to seamlessly switch between landline and IP telephony on multiple platforms.

Eight engineers from its India - based operations are currently in Germany to ensure 99.99 per cent uptime of the FIFA network.

It is early days to say who will take home the World Cup three weeks from now. But for the technology players whose skills and expertise is making it happen, it might well be like the race in Alice's Wonderland, where everyone wins and all take home prizes.

Today, football, tomorrow disaster management?

While individual companies involved in creating the FIFA IT network are reluctant to put a cost on their services - much of it free by way of sponsorship, industry watchers feel the system would have cost something under $20 million to create and maintain for the one month of the games. Avaya, the main converged communications partner, paid over $40 million in sponsorship fees to FIFA — a good part of it in the form of delivered infrastructure.

But when the system is dismantled, what remains? The invaluable experience from managing a huge real time network of this kind, feels the Avaya Chairman and CEO, Don Peterson. In 2003, a hurricane lashed the US East Coast, just three days before the opening games of the Women's World Cup in Washington DC. The wireless network took a severe bashing - but was restored in time.

Networking events like FIFA - at a basic technical level - are not very different from providing disaster management and recovery solutions for a Tsunami, or a Hurricane Katrina, or an earthquake in Pakistan or Indonesia, Peterson told eWorld in a special briefing on the eve of the FIFA games inaugural in Munich.

The knowledge that not just Avaya, but a dozen other technology partners, take back from the games in Germany will help them fine-tune their solutions and place many of them at the hands of governments and international relief agencies, should the need arise.

That may be the real, residuary benefit from all the technology that FIFA has enabled, once the football fever dies down.

eworld@thehindu.co.in

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