executive
insight
Ericsson
One of the challenges facing telcos is convincing governments of
the need for significant change in infrastructure and services
arlier this year Ericsson teamed Now we have to go from demonstration
E
up with non-governmental to implementation. It is not going to be
‘We need to convince
group The World Wildlife Ericsson, or Vodafone or the government
Fund (WWF) to produce a re- [working alone]. It will require new part- people outside of
port on how the ICT industry could make nerships and new ways of thinking,” says
smarter, more efficient use of energy and Weidman.
our sector’
resources. The aim is to get the ICT in- One area of interest to Ericsson is the
dustry—which according to the European development of smart cities and the use
Elaine Weidman
Commission generates 2% of all carbon of a single infrastructure to provide both
emissions—to create energy saving serv- civic and commercial services. Cities such rather than a product. Yet Weidman be-
ices for the remaining 98% of carbon as Stockholm, Amsterdam and Singapore lieves governments have a key role to play
emitting sectors and activities. are already going down the smart city in tandem with telecoms service provid-
“On the broader agenda, we started a route, which promotes the use of tech- ers. “We have to promote ways to use mo-
project with the World Wildlife Fund in nologies such as smart metering and re- bile broadband instead of building parallel
Sweden to look at not just the 2%, but the mote control systems to reduce emissions infrastructure,” she says.
98%. We wanted to look at how telecoms and energy use. Such projects are part of For example, “road tolls around cities
would provide a low carbon option for the the EU’s 20-20-20 plan, which establishes [often rely on new infrastructure] when
city…The initiative was to look at how objectives to improve, by 2020, energy ef- they could use the location-based services
you could apply broadband technolo- ficiency by 20%, to reduce CO2 emissions in a car. In the US there is parallel [com-
gies and if you could use infrastructure in by one fifth and to increase renewable en- munications] infrastructure on a road,
smarter ways; what impact it has on cit- ergy sources to make up 20% of the en- when we could use 3G,” says Weidman.
ies; how you measure that; and if you can ergy mix. The city of Malaga in Spain, for Like her peers in companies across
measure that, what are the implications example, hopes to reduce CO2 emissions the industry, Weidman stresses the need
for policy makers,” says Elaine Weidman, by 6,000 tonnes per year across 300 indus- for standards, particularly if the industry
vice president sustainability and corporate trial customers, 900 service providers and is to sell innovative energy and resource
responsibility at Ericsson. 11,000 households, over a period of four management solutions to other sectors.
For Ericsson, the toughest challenge years, using technology and renewable “There is a lack of standardisation. We
facing the industry is not convincing op- energy sources. really need the ITU to step up. When we
erators to improve the energy efficiency “Cities and governments need to lead get to the 98% we really need to increase
of their own networks. “The industry has by example more,” says Weidman. “It’s the focus in our industry on how to meas-
a lot of low lying fruit. When the ICT our job in our sector to educate them. ure. Open standards [bring] economies
boom took off people didn’t have the time They [city governments] think about CO2 of scale,” says Weidman. “We have been
to think about energy. There are lots of and they think about traffic…[But] they through the build-out stage [in telecoms].
ways to improve energy efficiency in the are not leveraging whole new infrastruc- The next phase is how we use infrastruc-
installed base…[such as] putting networks tures and thinking about major new serv- ture…and how to deliver different serv-
in sleep mode,” says Weidman. ices…and that’s a huge challenge.” ices using the same infrastructure.”
Indeed, new networks are becoming One of the difficulties arises from a lack Ericsson is also tightening its inter-
more energy efficient. “Between 2001 and of a single, high-profile body that rep- nal use of energy and has set itself the
2008, for example, in WCDMA [basesta- resents the breadth of the industry, says objective of a 10% reduction in carbon
tions we] reduced [energy consumption] Weidman. “We don’t have one lobbying footprint per subscriber, applying to all
by 80%,” says Weidman. A more impor- body. The GSMA is focused on mobile… products in its portfolio. For example, it
tant but much more difficult task, believes There is no one champion,” she says. is moving away from air transport and in
Weidman, is persuading other sectors to Governments are still only in the early 2009 moved 60% of products by land and
implement information and communi- stages of understanding how ICT can help sea, explains Weidman. Transportation
cation technologies as a means to better in their energy management and conser- was responsible for nearly 370,000 tonnes
manage energy use. “We get a situation vation process, according to the Ericsson/ of CO2 emissions in 2008 out of a total
in our sector, whether it’s an operator or WWF report. “It is only as of 2008 that for the company of 780,000 tonnes. That
a vendor, where we are preaching to the ICT has started to feature as a mainstream compares with 420,000 tonnes from trans-
choir. We don’t need to convince each solution in policy processes,” it says. This port and 805,000 tonnes in total emissions
other. We need to convince outside. is partly because ICT is a service enabler in 2007. n
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