An overview of available and future technical solutions to reduce/optimize the energy consumption of Telecom equipment and networks

摘要

In the past years, increased environmental awareness from the community as well as government's commitment on energy efficiency have been converted to pressure on the ICT players to optimize their energy footprint. In the meantime, soaring energy price is impacting very seriously on their financial balance. In the last year, this effect has been temporarely attenuated as a side effect of the economic crisis, but it's expected to worsen both due to the future increase of the energy cost and to the punitive measures (such as differential pricing) being launched in many countries to boost energy efficient behaviours. Furthermore, based on their corporate social responsibility policies and increased pressure from institutions and environmental organization, ICT companies are required to devote all efforts to optimize the impact of their technologies and services on the Earth in terms of energy consumption and emissions, mainly CO_2. The communication market, as a whole, is in a development phase. Subscriber growth in emerging market and bandwidth demand increase in the developed market is inevitably bringing networks to expansion. The increasing number of equipment running online has led to increased demand for energy. The increase of energy prices and the growth of the total energy consumption is creating long-term financial pressure to the TLC/ICT Operators. In order to fulfill the need for higher energy efficiency, a great variety of different strategies and solutions are currently being implemented or under evaluation. These also include redefining network architectures, so to optimize their overall energy impact. Other (most) strategies and actions are aiming at the equipment level or at some specific features. Telecom Italia is acting towards global and regional Standardization (e.g. GeSI-EE IOCG, ITU-T at world level and ETSI, ETNO, at European level), national/regional institutions and Vendors in order to speed up the availability of more energy efficient products and solutions. Huawei has a strong commitment towards energy efficiency and sustainability. In the last months, Telecom Italia and Huawei have strengthen their cooperation trough the creation of a joint Network Innovation Center, to cooperate on: analysis, field trials and solution optimizations concerning the most interesting and promising technologies.