High Speed Internet for Tour de France

Orange provides temporary high-speed, reliable communication networks for Tour de France.

11:03 30 August 2019

French telephony giant Orange provides temporary high-speed, reliable WiFi connection and fast 4G coverage for each day of the race across rural France. It uses cutting-edge technology that makes it possible for each stage of the race as it follows the tour.

 

 

 

The scheme required three semi-trailer OB vehicles, around 70 technicians, 500 temporary lines, 220km of optical fibre cables, 450 back office technicians and 15 tonnes of equipment. Orange installed eight temporary WiFi networks at each Tour de France village providing around 200Mbps while handling 10,000 simultaneous connections.

 

 

 

Orange director of projects Henri Terreaux said: “We bring connectivity to the Tour de France, providing WiFi, comms, radio, 4G and telephony across each of the stages, at all sections of the course. Our network is also used for data capture from the bikes for the TV graphics and analysis.

 

 

 

“We provide a 1 gigabit link and are planning to upgrade to a 10 gigabit link for next year to provide increased capacity. Every morning we’re the first truck to arrive – all trucks gather around and we connect up to everyone, with our technicians carrying cable for every truck. It takes 2-3 hours to deploy everything and about the same amount of time at the end to de-rig everything. The truck is fully packed up by 10pm when we leave to go to the next stage.”