The company’s Totem tower company has won the right to build the service and operate it for all mobile operators from the line’s opening in 2025 until at least 2035.
Line 15 Sud is one element of the Grand Paris Express, now being built by Vinci Construction (pictured). The whole line 15 is planned to be 75km long but 15 Sud will have 16 stations over 33km.
Nicolas Roy, CEO of Orange’s Totem Group said: “Indoor connectivity is a priority not just for companies and real estate actors, but also for the entertainment and transport sectors. Totem supports its customers from end-to-end, proposing the most suitable connectivity solutions and positioning itself as the essential actor for deploying 5G in the most complex locations.”
Totem will use a mobile indoor distributed antenna system (DAS) network for the entire 15 Sud line of the Grand Paris Express, the company announced.
Passengers on the line will be able to access 5G from end-to-end, between the future Pont de Sèvres and Noisy-Champs stations. This means the 15 Sud line will be one of the first Paris subway lines to have end-to-end 5G connectivity, said Orange.
Totem described the project as “a real technical challenge. Nearly 40,000 hours of work will be needed to build a DAS network involving around 1,000 active antenna and equipment along the entire 15 Sud line.”
The technological challenge is particularly acute in the tunnels, where it is crucial to keep equipment dimensions to a minimum and ensure secure coexistence with other communication systems.
The Société du Grand Paris (SGP), which will operate the new network of Métro lines, chose the Orange group, via Totem, to deliver connectivity to the future 15 Sud line. Totem will provide all the investment necessary to deploy the infrastructure, “before commercializing the network to mobile telephone operators on the same terms and with complete transparency”.
Thierry Papin, managing director of Totem France, said: “With this agreement, Totem is fully staking its claim as a major player in indoor connectivity in France. The Société du Grand Paris has chosen a reliable and robust partner to deliver deployment, operator commercialization, maintenance and security for the full length of the 15 Sud subway line. It’s a remarkable collective effort, coming to fruition only seven months after Totem was created.”
Totem, created in France and Spain in November 2021, manages over 26,000 tower sites, flat roofs and other sites.
