(BEIJING, November 5) -- The Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG) released a new policy Monday for the second phase of the domestic Beijing Olympic ticket sales to address the ticketing system problems that arose following the launch of Phase 2 of the domestic ticket sales, reports Xinhua Agency.

After the second phase of the domestic ticket sales was launched on October 30, the public's purchase of tickets surpassed the system processing capability by more than eight times, leading to a "paralysis" of the official Olympic ticketing website. As a result, BOCOG decided to temporarily suspend the Phase 2 domestic ticket sales and issued an explanation for the situation on October 31.

On November 5, BOCOG released a new ticketing policy based on a comprehensive analysis of the situation and system capability.

The new ticketing policy for the Phase 2 domestic ticket sales institutes a unified ticket lottery system, whereby the order of ticket application submission will not matter. The ticket purchase limit will be adjusted accordingly, and the public may submit ticket applications from December 10 through December 30.

According to reports, the BOCOG Ticketing Center immediately began to work with the BOCOG Technology and Security departments and Beijing Gehua Ticketmaster Ticketing Co., Ltd to adopt measures to solve the technical problems as soon as they arose.

Since temporarily suspending the ticket sales, BOCOG has invited specialists from various organizations, including the Ministry of Information Industry, Digital Beijing, and the Beijing Olympic Games Internet content service provider Sohu.com, to join Gehua Ticketmaster in research and analysis to identify the source of the problem.

A ticketing official later said that after Phase 2 of the ticket sales began, an excessive volume of page views to the official ticketing website affected the database performance, causing in a "hole" in the optimization of the database processes and slowing the online search speed. In addition, new ticket buyers were unable to register with the system as a result.

Ticket sales for Phase 2 will resume on December 30 and will follow a modified ticketing policy. According to the BOCOG Ticketing Center, tickets that were successfully reserved by ticket buyers on October 30 through the various sales channels will still be valid. Specific ticket purchase guidelines for these ticket buyers will be released at a later date.