Orange said that it will connect more than 120 venues as well as airports, railway stations and training facilities during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games
French telecom group Orange announced it will provide dedicated mobile offers for French and foreign tourists, as well as athletes and their staff, to enable them to enjoy reliable connectivity during the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Orange is also announcing that private 5G Standalone technology will be used by broadcasters at several major Olympic and Paralympic Games venues.
The telco noted that 15,000 Olympic and Paralympic athletes will be equipped free of charge with the Orange Holiday eSIM 100GB 5G offer, in collaboration with Samsung.
Also, Orange said that from June 3 to September 8, it will be opening up its 5G network at no extra cost to existing consumers and business customers with a 4G package and a compatible mobile phone.
Deployed as a complement to the current commercial network, a private 5G SA network will be installed at several major venues, including the Stade de France, Arena Bercy and Paris La Défense Arena as well as along the six-kilometer stretch of the Seine for the opening ceremony and at sea at the Marina de Marseille, with the aim of boosting connectivity during these events.
Orange is the exclusive operator for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games and will be connecting more than 120 venues as well as airports, railway stations and training facilities.
Last year, the business division of Orange started to offer a hybrid public/private standalone 5G solution in France, combining simultaneous access to its public network with private network deployments for enterprises.
The new “two-in-one solution” had been tested at Orange’s base in Arcueil, south of Paris; the firm said it variously mixes network slicing, edge computing, and local data ‘break-out’ (edge-based data analysis) across twin public/private 5G infrastructure. Orange is “actively investing in the construction” of hybrid 5G networks in France, it said; its two units have been “constantly innovating to continue to develop services and use [cases]”, it added.
The hybrid solution is being offered as a managed service to France-based enterprises by Orange Business.
In the test setup in Arcueil, Orange used a router from Ericsson-owned Cradlepoint to connect to the two networks at the same time and direct data flows to the appropriate network according to predefined requirements of their carrier applications. The Cradlepoint router supports 5G SA and slicing, it noted.
