Three quarters of the technology infrastructure behind the 2006 FIFA World Cup was built by T-Systems, the business-oriented subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom. The latter is the biggest telco in Europe and a major sponsor of the mega-event.

For Germany 2006, the company turned each stadium into a sophisticated world of technology, described as “the stadium of the future”.

It laid on a fibre-optic network that links each stadium to a central international broadcast centre (IBC) with two 20 Gbps fibre connections. In the event of failure, the network can switch from one to the other in under five milliseconds.