France Summit 2024: Innovations in 5G, cloud, and mobile broadcasts revolutionise Paris Olympics coverage
SVG Europe France Summit speakers (left to right): France Télévisions’ Romual Rat, AMP Visual TV’s Stephane Alessandri, moderator and host Lise Cosimi, Orange Sports & Media’s Nicolas Deal and EMG / Gravity Media’s Bruno Gallais
Among many innovations, Paris 2024 Olympics was the theatre of some new experimentations in the cloud, in 5G transmission, and in using mobile phones as main or complementary broadcast sources. As a follow-up to last year when they revealed their plans, the various protagonists – including France Télévisions, AMP Visual TV, Orange and EMG / Gravity Media – shared at this year’s SVG France Summit in Paris their experiences.
A torch in the cloud
The torch relay had a special treatment at France Télévisions, covered for the first time live over 69 days. The public service broadcaster worked with AMP Visual TV and TVU Networks, using a mix of 5G and Starlink dishes for transmission, on a similar setup than the one that was successfully tested a year prior the Olympics for a three hour countdown live TV show special, shot on a boat navigating the Seine.
To create a 5G ‘dome’, a car, which acted as the race commissaire one and was therefore on the circuit all the time, was equipped with a dish and a 5G server, France Télévisions TechLab director Romuald Rat explained.
“It was totally plug and play, the only thing to do in the morning was to switch it on, and connection was automatic.” Cameras had one sim card connected to the private 5G network and five others to the public network. Private 5G was connected to the internet via a Starlink Maritime situated on the top of the car.
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“We delivered 8 to 10 hours of live per day,” Rat said. “It’s the first time that the torch relay was covered this way. And we went even a step further, as we produced a full TV channel from May 8 to September 8. It was used for the torch journey, but also as a third broadcast channel for France Télévisions during the games, for the inter-games, for the Paralympic torch relay and during the Paralympics themselves.”
“It was a huge challenge!” he added. “Whereas a control room requires a minimum 5-6 people, we produced eight hours of live with just two, one for the sound, one for directing and the graphics.”
Sailing in 5G
Another challenge was “to transmit embarked images from boats in the sea to the ground through smartphones,” described Stéphane Alessandri of AMP Visual TV, who was entrusted by OBS with the Marseilles sailing events, among others.
Following a first such but smaller experiment during Tokyo Olympics, it was decided to use smartphones to film athletes in action while sailing. Another difference with Tokyo is that the latter took place during Covid, as a result there was no crowd attending and more spectrum available, explained Alessandri.
“The thing is that mobiles phones have limited capacity while the races are taking place quite far from the shore,” he commented. “A mobile phone is not very powerful and it’s not very big either, you could not for instance install them on the top of the mast, or they would have just filmed the seagulls!” The solution found was to place one smartphone on each side of the boat.
Also tricky was the fact that a 5G ‘dome’ had to be set in the middle of the sea without knowing exactly where the boats will be. It was decided to use three catamarans connected together, which were navigating around the competition, creating a dome to which the 40 phones were connecting.
“And on the top of that, everything was moving a lot!” stressed Orange Sports & Media CTO, Nicolas Deal. “Usually when transmitting on the ground even though the mobile phone does move, the telecom tower does not!” he explained. “It did take a bit of time to adjust things…” acknowledged Alessandri. “No, 5G is not that easy!”
Getting closer thanks to smartphones
Mobile phones were used as well during the opening ceremony to resolve an issue for OBS which was to supply closer shots of national teams.
“Usually the 205 national teams parade in a stadium, so it’s easy to have a camera get additional shots,” explained Alessandri. “This time it was more complicated because the 205 delegations were standing in 85 boats navigating the Seine and it was not possible to have a camera all along the seven or so kilometers.”
As a result, it was decided to set one mobile phone per team in charge of providing the closer shots. For the transmission, a major 5G dome above the Seine was set by Orange, who also had been installing fibre all along the way. “There were as well many cameras filming from the shore, we supplied a huge infrastructure!” said Deal.
Orange was Olympics’ single telecom supplier, delivering 100% of the telecom services, a first for such a big event, usually using several companies. “Everything worked out, nobody heard of us during the Games, which is a sign of success,” said Deal.
At the question if any key lesson as regards the experience, “Anticipate, anticipate, anticipate!” he answered. On some, the telco company started to work as soon as one year before the event. “Everything done in advance went smoothly and was effortless, what was left for last minute was very tough for the teams.”
Beside technology, the true element to success was the people, he as well other panellists said. “You don’t do the Olympics because you need to, but because you want to,” said Deal.
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