The Road To Green Telecom Networks
Last year we saw Telenor and Warid vie in the media as the first one to install solar base stations. That was a start and the trend for green, renewable and more efficient solutions will continue. There is a lot more work to be done in the energy conservation and alternative reneable sources of energy for the technology and telecom industry. The infrastructure elements such as base stations consume significant energy and the data centers needed to run the IT operations are also major energy spenders. The infrastructure sharing idea promoted in Pakistan was also a good point in theory but its actual success has not been reported yet.
Typically, around half of the operating expenditure of a network company is spent on electricity, according to Ericsson. The proportion tends to be higher for operators in the developing world because their base-stations may be in remote areas, and therefore require diesel-fuelled generators. So the recent spike in energy prices has prompted operators to look for ways to cut costs.
The Economist ran a story about green telecom networks and ways to conserve energy in the telecom world. Good tips for saving energy from Economist.com include:
There are some relatively simple ways to reduce the energy consumption of a base-station. The first is to turn down the air-conditioning. Many mobile operators now run base-stations at a standard temperature of 35ºC, rather than the previous norm of 25-30ºC. Studies show that the higher temperature does not reduce the equipment’s reliability or life expectancy. “The biggest restriction is actually our technicians, who do not like going into the hut to work at 35 degrees,” says Andy MacLeod, Vodafone’s global networks director.
Operating at this temperature means ambient air can be used for cooling, even in hot countries. An air-filter is installed on one side of the cabin, and a fan is installed on the other, resulting in a steady flow of air. Vodafone plans to replace air-conditioning with this simpler approach, called “freecooling”, in the majority of its base-stations over the next three years, as part of a plan to reduce its carbon footprint by 50% between 2006 and 2020.
Other energy-saving tips are even simpler. In many hot countries, telecoms firms paint the exterior of base-stations white to deflect the sun. Another power-saving measure is to turn off base-stations completely when they are not busy. In densely populated areas, many base-stations are installed to boost the network’s capacity, rather than to provide essential coverage. In quiet periods when there are fewer calls to handle, such as the middle of the night, some base-stations can be turned off. A further trick is to redesign the base-station to make it more energy-efficient. A technique called “remote radio-head” involves shifting radio equipment from the cabin to the top of the mast, where it is cooled naturally.
And on renewable energy.
Efforts are also under way to exploit renewable sources of energy to power telecoms networks. Leading equipment-makers such as Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks have installed hundreds of base-stations powered by solar panels, wind turbines or biofuels, mostly in parts of the developing world where there is no electricity grid. The number of renewable-powered base-stations will increase as networks expand into rural areas of the developing world. But so far they make up only a tiny proportion of the total.
There is also scope to reduce the environmental impact in another area: the handsets. Nokia, the world’s biggest handset-maker, has been looking at making mobile phones entirely from recycled materials such as plastics from drinks bottles and old tyres. Sony Ericsson, another handset-maker, recently announced a project called GreenHeart, which proposes various things the company would like to include in future devices, such as bioplastics and recycled materials, a low-power charger and online rather than paper-based user manuals.
The problem for operators is that even as they become more energy-efficient, network expansion and subscriber growth may still increase their overall carbon footprints. The Smart 2020 report, published in June by the Global e-Sustainability Initiative, a partnership of technology firms and industry associations, and the Climate Group, a non-profit environmental club, predicts that global emissions from telecoms networks and handsets will more than double between 2002 and 2020 as adoption increases.












