Royal visit livestream issues blamed on ‘huge network demand’

Big screens were set up at Cambridge Park and on the seafront to follow the King and Queen’s progress, but they regularly cut out and froze.

A Sure spokeswoman said the demand on the network during the visit was greater than anticipated.

‘We apologise to anyone who couldn’t access their data as normal during the royal visit, especially those who tuned into the live-stream, and hope everyone still enjoyed seeing Their Majesties,’ she said.

‘We saw 15,000 users attached to our three sites that cover the seafront between 10am and 2pm, a 50% increase on the average number of around 10,000 users,’ they said.

‘One terabyte of data was consumed during this time period, which is 300 gigabytes more than an average day.’

One islander at Cambridge Park with his family said the problems affected their day.

‘The big screen was big enough and there were lots of chairs put out but once the royals started their walkabout, the signal starting dropping out.

‘It happened so frequently, it became quite irritating.

‘At one point, the very knowledgeable commentator began to apologise for the technical problems.

'But his apology was cut short by another signal failure.’

A St Peter’s resident who had stayed at home to watch the live-stream was also disappointed with the coverage.

‘It was either still pictures, no sound or nothing at all,’ he said.

‘I tried watching in the morning but gave up, I then went back in the afternoon and it was still cutting out and I just lost interest.

‘It was a great opportunity missed to promote the island to the watching world.

'After all we don’t get a visit from the monarch everyday.’

A States spokesman said it shared everyone’s disappointment over the disruption to the coverage, which was provided by a third party supplier.

‘The supplier had taken mitigating actions, with more than one contingency, to account for the additional pressure on the network from the very large crowds on the seafront,’ he said.

‘However these were unfortunately and unexpectedly not effective, resulting in the stream being interrupted.’