Re: Telephone Voting System

keith the traffic — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:40:12 GMT

The last time I checked, ITV telephone voting utilised the "Telescope UK" voting machine. This has a maximum capacity of 28000 lines.
Each line can only handle one call at a time and as each call lasts around 5 seconds
(While the voter hears the recorded message "This is xxxxxx, thank you for voting for me. Your vote has been registered".
So if each line carries one vote every 5 seconds -that's 12 votes per minute, 720 votes per hour and, with 28000 lines, in theory the system can carry 720 x 28000 = 20 million votes per hour.(or 3.3 million votes in "your" 10 minutes!)

Unfortunately in practice the system does not carry anything like this number of votes due to a process called call gapping.
Call gapping is a facility used by network operators (BT, C&W etc) to stop their networks from meltdown when they are severely overloaded.
It is necessary because parts of the routes to the voting machine also carry other types of calls eg 999 calls which must be protected.

If the vote arrival rate to a particular number exceeds a certain threshold then further calls to that number are inhibited at source for a certain time. After this time (typically 5 to 10 seconds) new calls are allowed until the threshold is reached again, when calls will again be inhibited for a few seconds). At first sight this appears to be fair as the rule applies to all lines.
Unfortunately it is applied on a per number basis so numbers receiving the highest votes will be inhibited first whilst calls to another,less popular number, will be retricted less often, perhaps not at all if they do not reach the threshold.

If the effect of this were only to reduce the number of votes to the most popular candidate so that they win by a smaller margin it would be OK. Unfortunately it can easily be demonstrated that in situations like the finals of the X factor voting where vote arrival rates peak way above the threshold for call gapping, then the result itself is reversed in favour of the less popular candidate.

ITV may like to dig out the X factor video footage of Gareth vs Will Young. I remember the commentator saying the voting was neck and neck (well it would be if the peaks were clipped by call gapping) and the lead was alternating (Well it would as first one number and then the other was call gapped) and the hoo-ha afterwards as people complained that they could not vote for their contestant but other members of the family could vote for their favourite using the same telephone line.
I was finally convinced when they announced that the result using text voting alone (which is not subject to gapping) was different to that from the phone vote when treated separately!
And a quote from "The X factor watch": "Dermot reveals the surprising final result, that Leon Jackson is the Winner of The X Factor Season 4.Surprising only because Rhydian has been the front runner all through this season. However young Leon has progressed both in performanceand confidence more than any other act since the finals began. Earlier in the show Dermot announced that just 1% separated the top 2 acts.
Clearly X Factor's dark horse has pipped the front runner right at the post."

So, in answer to your original question re the voting capacity of the ITV phone voting system,no phone voting system can handle 10 million votes in 10 minutes - I would say 3 million votes per 10 minutes in theory, but less than half this in practice due to network operator's restrictions.

BT provide the service on the TELESCOPE UK system via its euphemistically called Intelligent Network.
The good news is: yes, it can process the results, albeit only the votes that get through - not the ones that are blocked by call gapping.

I hope this helps.

Telephone Voting System

johnmarc — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 10:32:30 GMT

How many votes can an automated telephone voting system handle per second or per minute, and what company provides ITV with the telephone voting sytem or do they do it in house. Can a phone voting system handle 10 million votes in 10 minutes? and process the results?

Britain's Got Talent

Re: Telephone Voting System

Telephone Voting System