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The Olympic Games are perhaps the world's best-known sporting competition, broadcast to billions worldwide.
Behind the scenes, intricate internet-connectivity infrastructure broadcasts every twist and turn to those watching from home, while keeping millions in Paris connected with always-on data. 5G is also being used to offer unique perspectives, including from mobile cameras showing how kitesurfers experience their sport.
"Seamless internet connectivity is no longer a luxury at large-scale events — it's an expectation," Markus Nispel, the chief technology officer at Extreme Networks for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, told Business Insider.
This year, the Games are using 5G to pursue more-seamless connectivity for attendees. But it's taken multiple Olympics over six years for the technology to reach new heights.
Here's how 5G capabilities have progressed at the Olympic Games since 2018, starting with a small trial at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, and expanding to today's Games-wide connectivity experience.
For the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, KT, formerly Korea Telecom, ran 5G-network trials to showcase how the technology could be used.
The trials included Sync View, a small camera that provided real-time athlete viewpoints, and Hologram Live, which broadcast press conferences live and in hologram form. There was also a 360-degree virtual-reality system that let visitors put on a headset and be immersed in other venues.
Another trial feature, Time Slice, allowed viewers at home to watch events from multiple angles. The demonstrations highlighted the potential of 5G for high-speed, low-latency applications in broadcasting and immersive experiences.
The trials in Pyeongchang were limited by necessity: 5G was still a nascent technology. Widespread adoption of end-user 5G didn't start until a year after the 2018 Games, but organizers saw the opportunity and chose to trial it.
The delayed Tokyo Olympics, which took place in 2021 because of the coronavirus, included a slew of 5G innovations.
Golf-tournament attendees could rent devices to watch live footage of players who were at different holes from where they were, which provided a new level of access.
For the sailing competition, a 50-foot floating screen in the harbor broadcast footage of the event via a drone and 5G technology, bringing a historically hard-to-see sport closer to viewers. At the swimming pool, attendees could use a 5G-enabled augmented-reality app to learn more about the competitors in front of them.
All those innovations were made possible by the collaboration between the tech giant Intel and its Japanese partner NTT Docomo. The companies jointly developed the 5G network at what organizers called "the most innovative Olympic Games ever."
Indeed, the Tokyo Games saw a significant step forward in 5G adoption because of Japan's advanced tech use. But it would still take time for it to be adopted more widely.
China has long been an innovator of mobile technology, and the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing proved no exception.
Each Olympic venue had a full 5G network available to use, a first for the global competition. The technology was used at all sporting events, allowing for much deeper integration with TV broadcasting. Mario Reis, the director of telecommunications at the Olympic Broadcasting Services, said at the time that advancement in 5G enabled it to be trusted enough for deployment as a backbone technology for the Games' coverage.
Intel once again partnered with a company from the host country, China Unicom, to roll out 5G capabilities. This was a boon given the more-remote nature of the Games, which took place during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The ability for athletes to keep in touch with their families using 5G — which allows for faster, higher-resolution video calls — likely helped ease the challenges of performing at an event where movement and interaction were limited.
Unlike previous Games, where organizers have sought to assign network responsibilities across a number of providers, the Paris Olympic organizers hired Orange as the sole provider to oversee 5G.
"It's a very impressive deployment that we are doing to enhance coverage," Bertrand Rojat, the chief marketing and innovation officer at Orange, told BI.
The telecom giant's plans include a massive private 5G network to provide capacity across 32 sports and 120 official sites across the city. The organizers said that 12,000 screens, 8,000 WiFi terminals, and 13,000 computers are all connected by nearly 250,000 miles of fiber-optic cable, which will transmit the Games from the stadiums.
The ability to use network slicing, where a 5G network's total capacity is divided up and earmarked for specific uses, means the Olympic Broadcasting Services, which streams footage of the events, is expected to have minimal issues. If network slicing weren't in place, periods of peak usage by Games attendees could take up the capacity needed to power broadcasts.
It's a significant test of the network but one that Rojat believes Orange is well prepared to handle.
"We're quite confident," he told BI, "although you can never commit 100%."
