The scene is set: 67,000 fans pack into the Stade Vélodrome, Marseille, France, to witness the pinnacle of French club rugby, the Top 14 Finale.
Unfortunately, the contest at the end of June was a bit of a mismatch, with Toulouse thumping Bordeaux Bègles 59-3, bringing down the curtain on a season that started the previous August.
However, DCD wasn’t there to cover the match from a sporting perspective but instead delved into the connectivity that was on offer at the stadium.
The Stade Vélodrome, also known as Orange Vélodrome, was the first sports ground in France to be connected to a 5G network.
"I think this is one of the great use cases because you have a very high density which was not the case with 4G," Laurent Godicheau, chief strategy, partner, and sustainability officer, Orange Business, tells DCD. "So I think the stadium use case is a great example of the usefulness of 5G.”
Private 5G lab
To put this theory into practice, Orange Business has its own private 5G lab at the stadium, which operates as a 5G Standalone (5G SA) network.
It’s at this lab, where the carrier trials its technology to ensure it is fit for purpose for match days.
The private 5G lab, which spans more than 600 sqm (6,500 sq ft), is used to demonstrate a range of different innovations and serves businesses of all sizes and local communities.
Several use cases are underpinned by the 5G network at the ground, such as private 5G media production, which means Orange can utilize the cloud for application services such as video control, reducing the amount of equipment that it needs to deploy onsite.
“We are here in Marseille and we have a camera in Lannion (in northern France, more than 1,000km away), plus we have our private cloud core network in the cloud, and thanks to that we can control everything remotely,” explains Solène Verdier, partnership success manager at Orange Business.
The telco has partnered with LiveU, which hosts its studio in the cloud and is based on Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS is also Orange’s strategic Edge partner.
Because Orange operates a 5G SA network at the ground, it is able to utilize capabilities such as network slicing, something that is critical for private 5G networks. Staff at the venue can use the private network to communicate with each other through Team Connect.
“Team Connect is a solution that uses Push to Talk,” explains Verdier. “It's like a walkie-talkie but with more functionality, similar to what you’d get with WhatsApp. It's as simple as pushing a button and connecting to somebody else on your team, such as for security and technicians.”
Verdier adds that Team Connect runs on a private network that uses Orange’s 4G and 5G connectivity. Orange claims that the service is secure from the public and one that doesn’t suffer from interference.
For hungry spectators, Orange notes that its private 5G network can deliver a more tailored food and beverage service to people’s seats while being able to take payment via smartphone. The company says that by using a private 5G network, it’s able to adapt stocks and systems for its workers to understand what they have or need for their customers.
Orange’s Edge
One of the key features of the private 5G network is how it uses Edge computing.
“For me, Edge computing is the difference between your brain and your spine,” says Verdier, likening the Edge to a spine, where you can feel and process things immediately, with the cloud acting as the ‘brain,’ storing historic information that might be needed in future.
One such Edge use case on show at the Stade Vélodrome was Orange’s Touch to See tablet. The device, shaped like a rugby pitch, is designed for blind people to feel the action through touch sensitivity. It’s equipped with a magnetic disc which is designed to replicate real-time movement of the ball and feel how the game is being played out on the pitch.
Orange says the technology is enabled through 5G, Edge computing, and AI, and is supported by in-ear commentary.
Don’t forget to switch it off as you leave
Orange Group has outlined plans to be a net-zero company by 2040, with Orange Business aiming to produce 45 percent less CO2 by 2030.
A key part of this strategy is to be more energy efficient, something which Orange has sought to do at sporting venues, such as the Stade Vélodrome.
Orange Business and Cisco have developed a smart power solution to intelligently power its WiFi access points using Power over Ethernet (PoE) based on real usage. It says that by doing this, it has been able to reduce WiFi energy consumption by 52 percent at the stadium.
“We have 30 big events per year, we don’t need them to have [WiFi] every day,” says Verdier, noting that it made sense to be more efficient in how the access points are used.
Assessing the Edge opportunities
In a follow-up discussion after the event, Frank De Jong, program director of Edge computing at Orange Business, expanded on the company’s Edge approach to DCD.
“In the beginning, we were fighting the view in the market that Edge was all about latency, where in reality, specifically in Europe, for example, latency is not a big issue,” he says.
For countries like the US, where the distances covered are much bigger, “it may become more relevant to talk about latency,” De Jong says. “The discussion around latency is not so important at the moment but instead around things such as the reduction of bandwidth for data privacy have been much more important.”
According to De Jong, Orange Business expects Edge will generate value for the smart industry by utilizing the Internet of Things (IoT). He notes that this will support areas such as worker safety within factories.
“We see the biggest take up of use cases is the smart industry area. We’re looking at how we can use Edge computing for certain use cases in this area,” he says. “On the IoT side, we’re collecting data from manufacturing processes, either the primary process or the things like predictive maintenance and sensors.”
Expanding the ecosystem
The acknowledgment of the smart industry being a pivotal beneficiary of Edge has meant that Orange Business identified AWS as an ideal partner for Edge.
However, this wasn’t always the case, explains De Jong. The carrier initially only worked with Google as its Edge compute partner, before expanding its ecosystem to include AWS.
“We always try to be vendor agnostic, but that is difficult,” says De Jong. “Because we think Edge computing is just an extension of the cloud, it was more natural to start with Google on this, as our Edge program could only deal with one hyperscaler at a time.”
“The idea always was that we were going to take on the next hyperscaler in the program when we were on our way with Google, and so AWS was on our wishlist as it has a pretty strong offering and coverage in the smart industry.
“The smart industry is still an area where we believe we should be active, mainly driven by the fact that most of our customers have some form of manufacturing. So if we're there with the network, why don't we go there with some IoT stuff as well.”
5G needs Edge
De Jong says that Orange Business is still learning every day about the Edge, and acknowledges that, although there’s no one killer Edge application, use cases are popping up one by one, while the market begins to mature out of what he calls a deadlock.
He’s sure about one thing though; that Edge is pivotal to 5G.
“There can be Edge computing without 5G, but 5G without Edge computing is a bit useless,” he says.
“If you want to have a 5G private mobile network in your factory, we will place Edge equipment in your factory that runs the core of that 5G network,” De Jong adds. “If you need 5G, then you need Edge as well.”