The sale of Olympic tickets was suspended on October 30th, the first day of the second tranche sale. The official ticketing website has been paralyzed since 9:30AM.and has not been resumed so far. Besides, phone lines were jammed and serpentine queues formed at banks.

An official from the Ticketing Center said Tuesday night that the Games organizers had decided to temporarily halt domestic ticket sales to improve the technical plan and will announce new ticketing information on November 5.

Because of the overwhelming volume of page visits, the technical system was unable to perform the tasks well enough, and many applicants were unable to successfully submit their applications, the official said, adding, we sincerely apologize to the public.

In previous press releases, the organizers claimed that full preparations had been made for the second phase of the ticketing.

The ticketing system has already done a number of stress tests, it should be able to handle 30,000 tickets sales hourly, as well as commit 1 million or more of these online sites hourly.