Latest / Technology Now / Delivering the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics: 1600km fiber optics, 2.6 billion users, and an AI-driven network | Giuseppe Civale
Transcript
- MICHAEL BIRD Hi, Sam SAM JARRELL Hey, Michael. MICHAEL BIRD you know the Winter Olympics that just happened, the Milano Cortina Olympics? Um, of the little over eight billion people on the planet . how many of them do you think engaged in some way with the Winter Olympics? So be that watching or listening to or just following online SAM JARRELL Oh gosh. Well, I think it would be bold to be like all 8 billion people, uh, 'cause not everyone has access to like internets or television So we'll guesstimate like 1 billion people MICHAEL BIRD Good answer. Now, according to research commissioned by the International Olympic Committee and published in February 2026, a whopping 2.6 billion people followed the games – That's about 30% of the entire global population. It's a fair chunk of people SAM JARRELL that's pretty unbelievable that that's even possible MICHAEL BIRD Yeah, and today we're gonna be exploring just how the teams behind the scenes, made this happen, and diving into the network which allows spectators in person and fans around the world to join in with every moment of the action. I'm Michael Bird SAM JARRELL I'm Sam Jarrell MICHAEL BIRD And welcome to Technology Now from HPE. MICHAEL BIRD Well, we've talked about sports before on this show and even discussed the technology behind going to a game, but some events are a bit more than just a single game in a single stadium SAM JARRELL Right, because the Olympics, or in this case the Winter Olympics earlier this year were spread over not just multiple venues, but multiple cities too MICHAEL BIRD 100%. And this presented all sorts of logistical challenges from the physical hardware that had to be installed in pretty hostile conditions. To the software keeping everything up and running on location, and even building infrastructure which could cope with the gargantuan quantities of data being transferred to allow the games to be broadcasted around the world SAM JARRELL So… how did they do it? MICHAEL BIRD Well, Milano Cortina was awarded the Winter Olympics back in 2019, so they had just seven years to get everything up and running, and one of those who worked on it was Giuseppe Civale, Director of ICT Infrastructure and Venue Technologies, who I had the pleasure of interviewing recently. Now, to set the scene, the first thing he told me was about some of the networking challenges which come with an event at this sort of scale GIUSEPPE CIVALE the network is, normally something that the people doesn't perceive, like something that is, relevant for the evolution or the implementation of an event like the Olympics. But at the end of the day, the network is the nervous system that, gives the possibility to the people that need to have this kind of service to share the information and to share the results. At the end of the day, why is it relevant, the network? It's relevant because first of all, the network is the tool by which, the performance of the athletes should be, deployed and distributed to the judge, and to the people that have to know before should be maintained in an official way. And also, is the infrastructure that, was used by the TV broadcaster for capturing the images and the audio for, preparing the, product to deliver to their customer base around the world. The network is also really important because, for implementing 20 days of, game, you need to start to work five, six, seven year before, and you have to organize, thousand of people that are working together with the tools that, give them the opportunity to exchange information, to exchange activities, to coordinate their activities for arriving to the final results of deploying the Olympic networks. Because the real client of the Olympic Games is not only the people that are in presence looking the competition, but are the hundreds of million of people that watching the TV, or the three billion of people that, watch, the opening ceremony last winter in Milano. MICHAEL BIRD and I guess the thing with, a network for a Winter Olympic Games is that it's not just in one location. and it's also not just in a city. we're talking up mountains GIUSEPPE CIVALE Yes, because the Italian Olympic Games was the first, Olympic game by which was applied the so-called the distributed Olympic model. So we spread, over the 80% of the Italian territory in Milano and the Alpine venues, the competition venues for the Milano Cortina Olympic Games. And we had the need to reach each of these venues in a very stable way with a connectivity that has to be implemented with all the full characteristics of, redundancy, differentiation of path, and the highest level of technology, because it's not possible to leave to the case the opportunity for manage an event that's so important like the Games. MICHAEL BIRD Can you give a sense of, how distributed, like from one site to the furthest site? GIUSEPPE CIVALE from Milano to Cortina, or Bormio in Valtellina, or Predazzo I listed the four of the place by which were implemented the competition venues. are more or less 400 kilometers by road. And each of them, even if they are near than, within this distances between Milano and one of them, we are talking about, 200 or 300 kilometers, or at least five hours of driving, because in the mountain road, you have to be very careful and not so speedy MICHAEL BIRD And within cities you can imagine how you manage connectivity. there's already fibers already there GIUSEPPE CIVALE in Milano that we had the location for the ice sports, except the curling that was in Cortina. We had the need to distribute and to deliver, dark fiber from the competition venues to the IBC, the International Broadcasting Center or OBS that collected the audio video contribution for preparing the TV product distribution. Because one of the thing that, normally the people, forgot is that in reality, you have to implement two separate network. One that is the so-called broadband co- Broadcast Contribution Network, is fully dedicated to the broadcaster. And the second is, so-called Olympic Network, is dedicated to a-any other customer base that you have to serve. When we spoke about customer base, are not included the final customer or the people that went to the venues for looking the competition. We are d-discussing about athletes, Olympic family, official timekeeper, and, the supplier and the partners that supports us for implementing the games. we had to implement two different types of infrastructure, and normally they are, nearby but separated in terms of, fiber connectivity So two couple of fibers for, for the broadcaster, two couple of fibers for the Olympic Network, and it never had to be installed in the same piping, and they were to be also differentiated in terms of path when you will connect with the end, user premises, equipment MICHAEL BIRD how did you do the connectivity up mountains? did you run fiber there or was it wirelessly? GIUSEPPE CIVALE in the mountains we were forced to deploy, starting from scratch more or less, 500 kilometers of digging, 600 in reality, for deploying 1,600, uh, kilometers of new fiber. Instead, HPE, former Juniper Networks, provided directly all the active, uh, equipment, MICHAEL BIRD So, f- 400 kilometers. Uh, I imagine, um, thousands of, of different network devices, access points, switches, et cetera GIUSEPPE CIVALE We installed, uh, 5,000 access points MICHAEL BIRD So… a fair few GIUSEPPE CIVALE We had to deploy and to deliver, globally, 1,000 and 800, active equipment, including router firewalls, and other equipment, switches into the venues, for, connecting over that, 40 main, different, venues, at which you have to add, over 60 secondary facilities dedicated for following logistic activities or transportation or any other, support activities for the functioning of the Olympic Games. MICHAEL BIRD And what sort of bandwidth are we talking about here? GIUSEPPE CIVALE we transferred globally, on the separately on both networks over, 2.5 terabytes of, content in our networks. And the bandwidth is, managed directly by the Juniper or HPE network equipment MICHAEL BIRD You mentioned firewalls, so, clearly security was probably quite an important element here. How did you make sure that the network was secure? GIUSEPPE CIVALE we decided to have in each of our ve-main venue, firewalls that were installed, for protecting, autonomously also what happened in each of the venue. And we decided also to apply the rule that if something, dangerous was, identified the venue has to be, disconnected from the, rest of the network and, until the sanity check was cleared, were not, introduced again into the infrastructure. Fortunately, we didn't have this kind of problem, but we are prepared to manage in this way this kind of occurrence. MICHAEL BIRD and this was a, self-driving network? GIUSEPPE CIVALE yes MICHAEL BIRD And how was your experience with a self-driving network? GIUSEPPE CIVALE The self-driving network for us was a really good experience. It was one of the characteristic way by which we choose the HPE solution. Because with the, requirement that we received by the, the International Olympic Committee, that we have to have an infrastructure as much as possible resilient, mission critical, and, as to be prepared to support, exceptional situation, either from the weather point of view than from the workload. At the end of the day, with the normal and the, normal rules of, designing applied then to five years ago, was not possible to deploy this kind of infrastructure, so you have to bet only for, using of the AI, and using the AI means that you have to bet on the self, configurating, self-management, self-managed, IP-based infrastructure MICHAEL BIRD And so do you think, the infrastructure, lessons you learned, is this now the gold standard for what a Winter Olympics should look like or a large event on a similar scale? GIUSEPPE CIVALE what we implemented was something that, no one, before us expected would be implemented and could became, in so short time, a normal requirement. the success of Milano Cortina Olympic Games, at the end of the day, increased the, threshold of, the request, of the requirement. And so for the people that comes after us and have to implement the new edition of the games, they have to face this kind of comparison. So it's normal from Milano Cortina edition that, an AI infrastructure, an AI-based infrastructure, self-configurating and self-managing, will be required by the organization MICHAEL BIRD And, I'd love to understand the sort of the legacy because, the Olympics is two weeks. what happens after? I mean, you've run fiber, you've learnt lessons. I mean, does that infrastructure stay? Does it go? GIUSEPPE CIVALE we decided to have, a good earth approach, for managing the future or after the game. All the activities and all the equipment that we, used were, engaged with the formula of, pay-per-use. For example, the supplier of the fiber, we decided to pay, for the usage of this infrastructure that was tailored on, their backbone for the time necessary for the games. And after they will decided to maintain or not this kind of links. In the larger part, they maintain it because they found a new business customer that have this kind of, bandwidth need that, uh, could be served by them. For, active equipment we had the opportunity to resell at the end of the day this equipment. And so this equipment will be used in other configuration. in other part of the world, and some will remain in Italy because there are some clients that want to use, this kind of, equipment also for their network. And some of these active, devices will remain in the same location by which they served for the Olympic MICHAEL BIRD 'Cause you sort of proved that it works a, in a, stadium or whatever. It's like, "Well, this works. let's maintain this." Yeah. Giuseppe, thank you so much for joining us on Technology Now. GIUSEPPE CIVALE Thank you I'm honored toparticipate here, and very happy to be here to tell this, success story. Because at the end of the day, this is a real success story of technology that doesn't involve o-only the technology, but it involves the evolution of the, also of the games, of the way to implement the games SAM JARRELL Wow MICHAEL BIRD I love stories like this. I love hearing how our technology is being used in innovative ways. So the distance between Milano and Cortina, as an example, was about 400 kilometers, 250-ish miles the sort of distributed nature of the infrastructure is staggering. And also, mountains aren't like particularly hospitable places for technology equipment, I wouldn't have thought. SAM JARRELL when he said that they dug on the mountain, all I could picture was, like, a bunch of guys up on a mountain, physically digging into the snow for hours on end to maybe, lay down fiber and, put an access point on it. That's crazy to me. MICHAEL BIRD the thing that I'm really struck by is, I think you said this is the first Winter Olympics using the distributed Olympic model. So it's not all in one city, it's across multiple cities. And so that just brings even more complication because it's not like, you know, something goes down, a network engineer can just go, and investigate the problem by going, driving over to the venue. If it takes five hours to get there, that's the whole day which leads really nicely onto the self-driving network part of the story. SAM JARRELL Yeah. That's true. I found it fascinating that he was talking about the self-driving networks as, basically an imperative because they need it to be the highest resiliency pos- possible. And he's right. this is one of those types of things that, when I'm actively, watching somebody, ski down a mountainside, I'm not thinking about the network. But if my, picture were to go away or the broadcast were to be interrupted, then I would only be thinking about the network and two billion other people would only be thinking about the network. So it's like one of those types of things where if they're doing it right, you're never thinking about it or noticing it. If they're doing it wrong, it's the only thing you can think about and notice. MICHAEL BIRD Yeah, And I think the fact that Giuseppe said, that AI-bel-based self-configurating, self-managing networks, are likely to be the sort of gold standard, like the requirement for networks for these sorts of sports events, because they are just so complicated and they have to be, they have to be resilient SAM JARRELL Yes. And, I also really appreciated your question to- towards the end of everything about, like, okay, well, what happens after the closing ceremony? Because in the past, people have heard about, post-Olympics, building structures are left behind. areas are not left in the best condition. stuff just gets left over, and it's not always necessarily taken care of. So I, was personally quite fascinated to learn about how they're able to be creative with whether or not stuff stays deployed, and then the stuff that does stay there has a purpose. MICHAEL BIRD Yeah. And, I think the phrase they use is legacy. Like the legacy of an Olympic Games is, is really important. And I think most people think about buildings, don't they? But actually, yeah, like they built this network, they proved it works. So in some instances, leave the network in. In other, in other instances where it's not required, recycle that equipment, give it to another organization. So I think as a business, I think it's something that we think about a lot and certainly our customers are certainly thinking about, aren't they? MICHAEL BIRD now Sam, I do have an important, very important question for you, because we are after all discussing the Winter Olympics. What is your favorite winter sport, either watching or doing? SAM JARRELL Oh gosh. Well, I grew up in Texas, so winter sports are not something that, like, I often thought about or even, like, really experienced. probably like snowshoeing. It's basically hiking, just put on, you know. I wanna know what yours is. MICHAEL BIRD I like snowboarding. I go snowboarding, somewhat regularly. and my favorite sport to watch the Olympics is the snowboard cross, which is essentially four people, I think it's four, maybe more, on snowboards going up and down this sort of undulating course with jumps and very tight c- corners. I think that is one of the most impressive, and I quite enjoy watching. I would always watch snowboard cross if it was on. I did ask Giuseppe this question as well. So let's quickly hear his answer GIUSEPPE CIVALE My favorite Olym- Winter Olympics sport is the figure skating. MICHAEL BIRD Really? GIUSEPPE CIVALE Yes. Because is one of the sport by which you can appreciate how is the capability of the human performer to express the maximum of his sensibility SAM JARRELL Okay that brings us to the end of Technology Now for this week. Thank you to our guest, Giuseppe Civale And of course, to our listeners. Thank you so much for joining us. MICHAEL BIRD If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please do let us know – rate and review us wherever you listen to episodes and if you want to get in contact with us, send us an email to technology now AT hpe.com and don’t forget to subscribe so you can listen first every week. Technology Now is hosted by Sam Jarrell and myself, Michael Bird This episode was produced by Harry Lampert and Eva Higginbotham with production support from Alysha Kempson-Taylor, Nik Damarell, Beckie Bird, Mari Lee, Alissa Mitry, and Jenessa Ayache. Our theme music was composed by Greg Hooper. SAM JARRELL Our social editorial team is Rebecca Wissinger, Judy-Anne Goldman and Jacqueline Green and our social media designers are Alejandra Garcia, and Ambar Maldonado. MICHAEL BIRD Technology Now is a Fresh Air Production for Hewlett Packard Enterprise. (and) we’ll see you next week. Cheers! SAM JARRELL Bye y’all