With the Paris Olympics 2024 ending on Sunday (11 August), operator group Orange hosted select media outlets this week to experience the event first hand, while opening up on some of the 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, telling Mobile World Live that while its dedicated infrastructure has been designed to cope with large traffic, it has clearly been “above what we have ever seen on our 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 also should 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 vying for gold in the 200 metre 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.

“Even some competitions had to stop, because the spectators were not following what was going on, on the field of play. They were all on their devices.”

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 we have 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 centres are secure.

Private network future
While providing spectator connectivity has been a priority, a large part of Orange’s deployment has also centred around private networks serving specific use cases.

Rojat explained the company had installed 21 cells in total on private 5G networks across five sites: It used 12 for the opening ceremony, three at Marseille Marina for the sailing compeititon, four at the Stade de France (athletics) and two at two other venues, utilising 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 video and images from around 200 Galaxy S24 smartphones, supporting broadcast services.

In fact, its private network has been such a success, Rojat revealed the organisers 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, which it touted heavily before the event, Rojat said it connected 13,000 devices using specific 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 success of private 5G “shows a way forward”.

Serving as the event’s only connectivity provider also made the process “much simpler and much easier”, he added.

Rojat explained it not only provides a single access point, but it was able to use its mobile network in some venues where it had deployed fibre in the past.

“We were able to do that because we operate the two components,” he said, adding flexibility is key when you do these kinds of things”.

Heroic
If there is one specific challenge Rojat can point to, it is time. He compared its role at the Olympics to its role of providing connectivity at industry event IBC, also a major project for the operator.

“IBC is huge and actually it is our biggest site in terms of connectivity, but we had one year to do it and plan our operation. For the opening ceremony here, it was very tough. In some cases, we only had access ten days before.”

Overall, Rojat claims the event and Orange’s role has been a major success, and industry watchers attending the event agree.

PP Foresight CEO Paolo Pescatore believes Orange’s role as the sole provider have ensured the Games are one to remember, going as far to dub the company’s efforts as “heroic”.

“Connecting fans, athletes, press, referees, staff, payment solutions, and more is a huge challenge. The network set-up has had to adapt to hundreds of events with careful planning for redundancy and considering all scenarios,” said Pescatore on the sidelines in Paris.  

Kester Mann, director of consumer and connectivity at CCS Insight, was equally impressed, stating the Olympics marks one of Orange’s most crucial periods in history and it appears to have “passed with flying colours”.

Additional reporting by Justin Springham.

Hear more in-depth thoughts from Springham and Pescatore in Mobile World Live‘s upcoming podcast on connectivity at the Paris Olympics 2024, out next week.