Royal wedding crashes BBC streaming
May 3, 2011
The popularity of the royal wedding proved too much for the BBC website which crashed on under the weight of traffic. Users reported they were unable to watch live streaming of the ceremony from Westminster Abbey. It also affected some of the corporation’s other online offerings, such as live coverage of the world snooker championship.
The BBC issued an initial statement confirming it was “experiencing some technical issues with BBC online. We’re investigating and will update when we have more information.”
It later added: “We are experiencing some technical issues with BBC Online due to the sheer weight of traffic which may cause the site to be slower than normal in some cases.”
Video coverage of the ceremony was interrupted by a holding page telling users: “We are experiencing abnormal traffic to our network or the service or servers it is on is not currently available. Please … try again later once we have solved the problem.”