Orange plans to capitalise on the legacy of the Olympic Games

On the evening of July 26, on the Pont de l’Alma in Paris, the cream of European telecoms attended the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. Christel Heydemann, CEO of Orange, the official operator of the Paris Olympic Games, invited the bosses of Deutsche Telekom, the Spanish Telefonica and the British Vodafone and BT. Phone in hand, they could not hide a small smile: will the mobile network manage to absorb an influx equivalent to that of five stadiums in France?

Since then, a smile has taken over M’s face.^me Heydemann: because in addition to holding up that evening, the network also resisted, in the following days, the audience records recorded during the events, notably during Léon Marchand’s races, followed live by millions of French people on their mobile phones. On August 2, for the victory of the Toulouse swimmer in the 200m medley, traffic on the Orange network was flashed at 1.87 terabits per second, or nearly 500 hours of very high definition video shared every second. Unprecedented.

“We had been preparing for months, the mobile network had been reinforced, but we did not expect such traffic. This demonstrates the full strength of 5G technology which, for the first time for an Olympic Games, was deployed at full power.”explains M.^me Heydemann au Monde. “We knew we were taking a huge risk”she acknowledges, Orange being the only official operator, where there were five in Tokyo in 2021, “But we couldn’t imagine not doing the Paris Olympics. And in the end, the results are very good.”.

Advocating for operators

Orange is not making this a money issue. Even though the group was paid by the Paris 2024 organizing committee for its telecom services, an Olympic contract is not profitable given the price of the sponsorship ticket, estimated at 100 million euros. “There are costs and we will see if the Games bring in revenue afterwards. It is too early to make that assessment.”the general manager puts into perspective.

Three-quarters of the telecom infrastructure installed specifically for the Olympics will remain in place, such as 5G at the Marina de Marseille, or will be able to be used elsewhere, which will help to cushion the financial burden and environmental impact. Some subscribers to whom Orange offered access to 5G during the Olympic period may be tempted to keep it, in exchange for an increase in their packages.

The CEO of Orange also intends to take advantage of the Olympic Games to plead the operators’ cause with the regulatory authorities, in particular the European Commission, accused of defending the consumer to the detriment of the sector’s profitability: “Competition and purchasing power are all good. But we need to allow investment in digital infrastructure. For that, the Games are a good way to hammer home the message: if we have good infrastructure, we can do extraordinary things.”

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