Christel Heydemann is the head of Orange, the historic French operator. With 49 billion euros in turnover last year and 129,500 employees worldwide, including 70,000 in France, Orange will be the sole operator of the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games.
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While the legislative elections will be held on Sunday June 30 and July 7, 73 bosses spoke out in an article published last week in Les Échos. Among the signatories, we find the chairman of the board of directors of Renault, Jean-Dominique Senard, as well as the boss of Adecco France, that of Galeries Lafayette and even the boss of Sofitel. They spoke out to defend the French social model and warn of the risk of a future government from an extremist party. Christel Heydemann, general manager of the Orange group, is not on this list of signatories. Before describing the challenge of the Olympics which awaits Orange, she explains herself on this point.
Christel Heydemann: Like all French people, I will vote in the first and second rounds. We are lucky to live in a democracy and so my appeal is there: I hope that as many French people as possible will vote. Ensuring that we will have an environment in France in which businesses will be able to develop in order to remain competitive are things that question and make all bosses think. But I don’t like to take very general positions on parties, whatever they may be. What interests me are precise measurements, so I have no problem giving my opinion on particular subjects. Moreover, Orange is very involved with elected officials since by nature, we are at the heart of regional planning issues. And so every day, Orange employees discuss local issues with local elected officials, which are key for businesses and French citizens.
franceinfo: I would still point out that the French State is a 23% shareholder in Orange. So you didn’t want to sign this text?
I did not want to sign this text because I felt that it was not my role as a business manager.
Your news is also obviously the Olympic and then Paralympic Games which are taking place this summer in France. You are the only operator chosen by the organizing committee and this is a first. Concretely, what will you have to do?
Our role as operator will be to serve our Orange customers. But for Paris 2024, Orange has a spectrum of activities that is the broadest ever entrusted to an operator. We have an activity called Orange Events, which specializes in sporting events. We accompanied the Rugby World Cup for example, the African Cup of Nations, Roland-Garros, the Tour de France. It’s about connecting athletes, connecting scores, referees, the media, it’s also capturing images in real time and ensuring that they are broadcast. The Olympic Games are the equivalent of 32 football World Cups at the same time, with 120 sports sites and technical sites.
“Beyond the sports sites, we will also connect the technical sites, the sites which host the athletes, the airports, the 26,000 accredited journalists as well.”
Christel Heydemannat franceinfo
It’s all this preparation work to ensure that the entire operation, all the security, all the teams who will be serving the athletes can function and we know how essential communications are in these moments.
The opening ceremony will take place on July 26 on the Seine. Hundreds of thousands of spectators on site will connect at the same time to send photos and videos to social networks. How to make sure it doesn’t bug?
Indeed, this opening ceremony has been described at Orange as “telecoms Everest”, because it is a huge technological challenge. Imagine 120 barges over six kilometers, on which obviously, we must ensure the connectivity of the organizers, the capture of images with 5G cameras, in addition to the connectivity of the spectators. This is a technology that we will also use for sailing events, for example at the marina in Marseille. We will use dedicated networks which will protect traffic linked to the organization and the media, and then of course everything that will be captured for the spectators. So obviously, we have a lot of work in progress to free up frequency bands.
But there is still a risk of a completely saturated network. We saw this at the time of the arrival of the Olympic flame in Marseille, where the network was completely saturated for a few hours, where no one was able to make the slightest phone call. It’s still a risk, can it happen?
So it’s true that in Marseille, there were many more spectators than had been anticipated. But we have a lot of teams, a thousand employees are dedicated to the Olympics event. We have an entire supervision center and therefore, we will manage this in real time, of course.
Watch this interview on video: