Orange Showcases Connectivity Solutions at the Paris Olympics

Orange hosted select media outlets at the Paris Olympics 2024 this week to experience the event firsthand. The operator shared some key successes and small challenges it has encountered in serving as the event’s sole connectivity provider.

Bertrand Rojat, CTIO at Orange Events and Paris Olympics 2024 highlighted the scale of Orange’s work over the past 29 days in connecting the event, saying that while its dedicated infrastructure has been designed to cope with large traffic, it has been above what they have ever seen on their network. And the numbers back up his claims. Rojat joked that not only did France win an Olympic gold medal in rugby at the start of the games, but Orange should also have been awarded the same for its mobile network performance at the final, held at the Stade de France venue.

“Orange and France should have got the two medals at once. We measured 2 terabytes of data in one hour on our mobile network at the stadium, with very high quality on all the transmission and no situation on the network whatsoever.” Even more impressive was an example he provided from later in the Games when French swimmer Leon Marchand was fighting for gold in the 200-meter butterfly event. Rojat explained that spectators across all venues, watching a range of different sports at the time of Marchand’s effort, used Orange’s mobile network and their smartphones to tune into Marchand’s gold-winning swim.

The Orange executive stated the company measured more than 100 terabytes of data on its mobile network during this time in the Parisian region of Ile-de-France: a number they had never seen before. The data numbers are staggering, but so is the resourcing required. In total, Rojat said it has a team of 1,000 on the ground, in addition to many other workers to ensure its wider network is running normally and all its main centers are secure.

While providing spectator connectivity has been a priority, a large part of Orange’s deployment has also centered around private networks serving specific use cases. Rojat explained that the company had installed 21 cells on private 5G networks across five sites. It used 12 for the opening ceremony, three at Marseille Marina for the sailing competition, four at the Stade de France, and two at two other venues, utilizing 3.8GHz – 4.2GHz spectrum.

From transferring photos to press agencies to video streaming the opening ceremony, use cases have varied. On the first, he explained photographers, using around 40 different devices, used its private network to transfer photos to agencies. In one week, 20,000 photos were transferred on its network. During the opening ceremony, a private network was used to stream various videos and images from around 200 Galaxy S24 smartphones, supporting broadcast services. Its private network has been such a success, that Rojat revealed the organizers have asked Orange to keep it in place for the closing ceremony, which was not in the original plan.

Moving to its Push-to-Talk service, Rojat said it connected 13,000 devices using specifically tailored accessories running over a priority 4G network. Simultaneously, 6,000 to 7,000 devices were connected. “That was actually the first time we were using that network, on that platform, with so many connections at the same time,” he said. Adding these elements to its connectivity mix is all part of a wider vision for Orange to push mobile technologies further. He acknowledged that the media, for example, prefer to use Wi-Fi, but the success of private 5G shows a way forward.