Live sports will need a lot more infrastructure by 2022: NetApp

NetApp has come up with a blog post looking at the evolution of what it calls 'spectator bandwidth', or the volume of data sharing capability, during the World Cup over the years.

In 1998, the company notes that spectator bandwidth measured just 2 MB, with an estimated 15,200 mobile-carrying spectators at the final match in France.

By 2006, the final match in Germany would have had an estimated spectator bandwidth of 30 GB, assuming that 69,000 spectators each sent the equivalent of a 1.3 MB picture in SMS, MMS, email and some Web traffic.

Cut to Brazil in 2014, and the numbers jump exponentially. "Spectators during the upcoming World Cup may generate 12.6 TB of data — that’s if 73,531 people share one minute of HD video from any number of smart phones or other devices," says NetApp. 

The company has also looked ahead to Qatar 2022 with the idiom 'heavier than a mountain", ثقل من جبل (athqal min jebel), when wearables will be responsible for even more data. "86,250 spectators for the final match may consumer 1.3 PB (petabytes) of bandwidth with wearable devices. Note that we didn’t say smartphones or other “mobile devices” — we’re talking about the future," says NetApp.

*Images from an infographic from NetApp. View the entire infographic here.