France Telecom Rides with Tour de France

Supplies end-to-end communications for cycling classic

By Glen Dickson -- Broadcasting & Cable, 7/2/2009 6:42:33 PM

Telco France Telecom, through its Orange and GlobeCast business units, will once again supply a range of telecommunications service for the Tour de France cycling epic, which starts in Monaco this Saturday, July 4.

Orange will deploy fiber-optic cable along the entire race route, providing bandwidth of 155 megabits per second in both finish zones, and will also supply an enterprise-class Wi-Fi network to support the press and all other professionals working on the Tour. Orange will also give consumers the full Tour experience through exclusive high-quality content across its TV, PC and mobile platforms.

Orange will roll out 155 Mbps fiber links across the whole route and its international points of presence (PoPs), quadrupling its bandwidth between the interview truck and the press room and offering a HD-quality videoconferencing system. Five Wi-Fi networks will support Tour organizers, press, photographers and broadcasters, with a radio terminal/server combination capable of routing more than 500 simultaneous connections. Around the press room, mobile relays will also handle 3G and 3G+ traffic.

Broadcast transmission vendor GlobeCast will deliver live images of the Tour de France on behalf of rights-holders France Télévisions and Union Européenne de Radiodiffusion. At the finish line of each stage, GlobeCast will deploy six mobile satellite and terrestrial transmission stations along with a coordinating reception truck, creating a system capable of broadcasting up to 25 SD/HD video signals simultaneously.

The Orange Sport Info network will air daily news flashes and features on the Tour, while Orange's TV and PC platforms will provide on-demand documentaries about legendary Tour riders. Orange's Web portal, orange.fr, will supply near-live race highlights, video summaries of each stage, and a daily stage review; similar content will also be offered on the "Orange World" mobile portal.

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