Motivations, practical considerations and more influence how the industry defines sustainability
How the telecom industry thinks about, and defines, sustainability lead to its priorities and actions, and the how and why it matters to the industry to work towards sustainability of telecom networks and businesses.
A detailed discussion of those motivations and practical applications came early in the day during the recent Telco Sustainability Forum, with input from panelists from Ericsson, the Open Networking Foundation and Arelion.
Sarat Puthenpura, chief architect for Open RAN with the Open Networking Foundation, identified several drivers for sustainability, which he called the “three aspects that drive the sustainability engine”: Economic incentives, social responsibility, and regulatory requirements.
Operators do have strong economic incentives to push toward more efficient networks, he said, as they strive to control energy costs and increase available network capacity and speed. In addition, Puthenpura pointed out, operators have also been moving toward more software-based networks where the need to frequently update electronic hardware (and the resulting junk at end-of-life) can be reduced. Meanwhile, they are facing increasing pressure to be good corporate citizens—and increasingly, regulations, when social pressure alone isn’t enough.
The work is particular urgent at the moment, as carriers are putting in place and planning for the changes they need to make in order to meet the goals that they, or regulators, have set for 2030 and beyond.
Jaime Gomezjurada, head of market intelligence for Ericsson America, said that in that broader context, how telecom operators think about the aspirational “best network” is shifting.
“Thedefinition of a ‘best network’ changes at this point. It no longer just means fast and reliable, but it also means high-performing, energy efficient and sustainable,” he said. “And there is implications to that, right? How we want to think about networks in those terms, and how you want to think about network planning.” The latter in particular needs to be more holistic, he added, in order to look at the various combinations of factors that can be optimized to maintain or improve performance, while optimizing enery use as well. With the Radio Access Network accounting for the largest percentage of network energy usage, it is also the primary candidate for targeting energy reductions.