Paris, July 26, 2024, end of the day, 10,000 athletes parade on the Seine for the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games (OG). On the platforms, 400,000 spectators enjoy the spectacle, smartphones in hand to share the moment. But despite their repeated clicks, photos and videos remain hopelessly stuck on the phone screen… This nightmare haunts the telecom operators, Orange, SFR, Bouygues Telecom and Free: will their mobile networks support the traffic generated by such influx?
In the streets of Paris, saturations are common during major demonstrations. But it’s hard to imagine networks being inaccessible during the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, for reasons of security and the country’s brand image. “We have been discussing with operators for two years, with a good level of collaboration, in order to find the best ways to strengthen their networks to absorb mobile traffic,” explain Mouna Benamar, responsible for the radio and mobile spectrum of Paris 2024.
It’s not that simple in the middle of Paris. The quays are listed as a UNESCO world heritage site: it is impossible to have telecom equipment anywhere. For the ceremony, operators will camouflage antennas on bridge pillars, hide temporary pylons and park antenna trucks in certain locations, such as during the last Rugby World Cup on Place de la Concorde where the fan zone was held. . Seven months before the opening ceremony, Orange, SFR, Bouygues Telecom and Free are also in the process of upgrading the Olympic sites (stadiums, halls, swimming pools, bodies of water, etc.) with 5G, a technology which offers three to four times more transport capacity than 4G. The four operators estimate their expenses at several tens of millions of euros each.
Priority emergency calls
Will this be enough? “We are doing our utmost to ensure the best mobile network experience for spectators at the competition venues and the minimum saturation for the Olympic opening ceremony”, replies Mouna Benamar diplomatically. Emergency calls should not be disrupted: they have priority on the network and, in the event of congestion, a call to 112 is diverted to the operator who has space.
Like traffic or transport, waves are a real headache for Paris 2024. The signals transmitted and received by tens of thousands of radio devices used for the Olympics (wireless cameras and microphones, stopwatches, wifi terminals, talkies -walkies…) will coexist in the Parisian sky. With, as on the roads, risks of traffic jams or collisions with major consequences: a jamming of the radio space and it is the live broadcast of an event which is threatened with a black screen; a conflict between two waves and it’s the video arbitration that goes off the rails.
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