On the evening of 26 July, on the Pont de l’Alma in Paris, the elite of European telecommunications attended the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. Christel Heydemann, CEO of Orange, official operator of the Paris Olympic Games (OG), invited the entrepreneurs from Deutsche Telekom, the Spanish company Telefónica and the British companies Vodafone and BT. With phones in hand, they cannot hide a small smile: will the mobile network be able to absorb a crowd equivalent to that of five French stadiums?
Since then, a smile has taken over M.’s face.me Heydemann: Because in addition to holding on that night, the channel also resisted, in the days that followed, the record audiences recorded during the events, in particular during Léon Marchand’s races, followed live by millions of French people on their mobile phones. On August 2, on the occasion of the victory of the swimmer from Toulouse in the 200-meter medley, traffic on the Orange network reached 1.87 terabits per second, or nearly 500 hours of very high-definition video shared per second. Unheard of.
“We had been preparing for months, the mobile network had been reinforced, but we did not expect such traffic. This demonstrates the full power of 5G technology, which has been deployed at full capacity for the first time at the Olympic Games.”explains M.me Heydemann in World. “We knew we were taking a huge risk”acknowledges, with Orange being the only official operator, while in Tokyo there were five in 2021, “But we couldn’t imagine not taking part in the Paris Olympics. And in the end the results are very good”.
Defend the cause of operators
Orange is not making it a question of money. Even if the Paris 2024 organising committee were to pay the group for its telecoms services, an Olympic contract would not be profitable given the price of the sponsorship ticket, estimated at 100 million euros. “There are costs and we will see if the Games generate revenue afterwards. It is too early to make that assessment.”puts the CEO into perspective.
Three-quarters of the telecoms infrastructure installed especially for the Olympic Games will remain in operation, such as 5G in the Marseille marina, or can be used elsewhere, helping to cushion the financial burden and environmental impact. Some subscribers to whom Orange offered access to 5G during the Olympic period could be tempted to keep it, in exchange for an increase in their packages.
The Orange CEO also intends to use the echo chamber of the Olympic Games to defend the cause of operators before the regulatory authorities, in particular the European Commission, accused of defending the consumer to the detriment of the profitability of the sector: “Competition, purchasing power, that’s good. But we need to allow investments in digital infrastructure. To do that, the Games are a good way to get the message across: if we have good infrastructure, we can do extraordinary things.”
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