- The Olympics will challenge wireless providers as 15 million people seek internet access at once.
- Careful planning and 5G infrastructure like private networks allow providers to meet demand peaks.
- This article is part of "5G Playbook," a series exploring one of our time's most important tech innovations.
When tourists, athletes, fans, and the world's media — an estimated 15 million visitors — congregate in Paris during the Summer Olympics, they'll undoubtedly reach for their phones, expecting to track the latest developments, stay in contact with their peers, colleagues, and friends, and share their favorite moments on social media.
To meet that expectation, telecommunications companies must bolster Paris' 5G network, the technology system that powers users' mobile-internet access.
This will be the fifth Olympic Games to use 5G technology. At the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, the telecommunications company KT Corp. trialed 5G for a limited time with mixed results. During the Tokyo Olympics, which took place in 2021, mobile-data technology was more widely adopted.
The upcoming Olympics in Paris will prove an even more massive challenge for 5G's communication-network abilities due to the event's scale: An estimated 15 million visitors will access the city's 5G network exclusively since WiFi is a less popular choice than mobile networks in France.
Preparing to meet Olympic Games attendees' internet demands
"The challenge when we talk sports is a lot of people at the same time, at a single location, who all want to communicate," Bertrand Rojat, the chief marketing and innovation officer at Orange, the telecommunications provider for the 2024 Olympic Games, told Business Insider.
Broadcasters will demand real-time, ultrafast broadcast channels; spectators will want livestreaming and data-roaming support. At recent sporting events, like the 2023 Formula 1 Spanish Grand Prix and the 2024 UEFA European Football Championship, there was an over 70% increase in roaming traffic.
According to Rojat, one of the first ways network providers can help ensure always-on connectivity is by getting a sense of how many people will be using the 5G network at once. Once they forecast how often a network is likely to be used, they can figure out the size of equipment needed and how much redundancy, or spare capacity, to include as headroom.
"Because there are competitions taking place in most of these venues already, we have a sense of what to do," Rojat said. He pointed to the Stade de France, Paris' main sports stadium, which was one of the host venues of the Rugby World Cup in 2023.
"We have competitions taking place in these venues on a regular basis, so we have been able to get some real measurements of the level of traffic and type of traffic," Rojat said. He added that Orange would use "centralized live monitoring" of how users fill that data capacity and adapt accordingly but wouldn't go into further detail.
Rojat said collecting data on the types of internet traffic users most commonly produce was important because it could make the difference between a 5G network remaining online and going offline.
Text messaging through apps like WhatsApp uses less data than livestreaming video. And uploading video highlights taken at your seat in one venue will use different elements of the network than downloading an official broadcaster's livestream because the event is less visible from your seat at another venue.
However, having that data doesn't ensure a maximum limit for what may be required capacity-wise. Forecasts of capacity can always be wrong, so connectivity planners include additional headroom above and beyond what they believe may be necessary.
Harnessing private 5G infrastructure
Orange is installing cellphone antennas on boats and extension units in sporting venues to bolster its 5G network.
The French telecommunication company also built a private 5G network with Cisco to livestream the boating races along the Seine with roughly 200 smartphones rather than bulky and heavy cameras, which could affect racing speeds. It uses 5G's network-splicing capabilities to reserve a part of the public 5G network for private use.
Constant mobile connectivity at large sporting events requires assistance from other industry players, said Stephen Giles, a senior consultant at NTT Data, a connectivity consultancy.
To solve for the Olympics' scale, Giles anticipates the use of neutral hosts or third-party mobile networks that lease 5G infrastructure to multiple service providers at once.
"Historically, the approach to providing network connectivity at large events, like the 2012 Olympics, was led by individual mobile-network operators, who were each responsible for putting their own systems in place at venues," he said.
But the landscape is evolving as the economics of building extensive connectivity infrastructure don't make sense for one-off events and sports games.
"Today, we increasingly see independent companies, known as neutral hosts, offering coverage-as-a-service to the network operators," Giles said. Since neutral hosts are shared by multiple stakeholders and used consistently, mobile-service providers don't have to worry about setting up and then taking down connectivity technology for individual events.
High stakes for mobile-internet service providers
With an event as large scale and internationally watched as the Olympics, any internet downtime users experience could pose significant issues for the host city, the International Olympic Committee, and the technology providers underpinning those connections.
"Our research shows that 5G-smartphone users who face connectivity issues at event venues are three times more likely to switch providers within six months," Katherine Ainley, the CEO of infrastructure company Ericsson UK and Ireland, told BI.
To support the 2024 Olympics' connectivity needs, network providers must prepare to rely on 5G's strength. At an event where champions are sometimes determined in seconds or even nanoseconds, every moment of connectivity will have to count.
Additional reporting by Leila Jordan.