executive
insight
Huawei
An EC code of conduct on energy consumption for broadband
equipment needs greater buy-in from Europe’s operators
he mobile industry has per- meeting the code of conduct is the likely
T
haps been most vociferous in need for an equipment upgrade.
‘It’s not easy to
trumpeting efforts to improve “It’s not so easy to convince opera-
the energy efficiency of net- tors,” says Paolo Gemma, senior manager convince operators
work equipment and to develop renew- of mechanical, power & environmental,
able energy such as solar panels. That is for Huawei’s European region. “Not all
to change completely’
not surprising when you consider that ra- operators are signing up. It depends from
dio access networks can account for up to operator to operator; some are more sen-
Paolo Gemma
90% of an operator’s energy consumption sitive. The big problem is to convince
according to Vodafone. operators to change completely. The networks, it says, make better use of band-
But changes are also afoot in the fixed technology is available,” says Gemma, width and use only 20% of their capacity
world, where equipment manufacturers who is also secretary for environmental for service performance protection, com-
and operators are looking at ways to im- engineering at ETSI. pared to 50% in a ring architecture.
prove the energy performance of broad- Another problem is that standards Gemma believes today’s momentum to
band networks and move to less energy have not been ironed out for DSL equip- provide more bandwidth-hungry services
hungry optical access networks. Certainly, ment. Groups such as ETSI are working make network upgrades to more energy
improvements in energy efficiency need on standards, but these are likely to take efficient equipment inevitable, if opera-
to take place: without them the electric- one or two years to formulate, explains tors are to balance the equation of operat-
ity consumption of European broadband Gemma. “Our equipment is able to work ing costs and revenues. “Some operators
equipment could rise to as high as 50 in a lower power mode. It’s more of a say that to offer new services they have to
Terawatt-hours (Twh) per year by 2015, question of quality of service for the op- reduce energy [consumption] in the net-
according to China’s Huawei, citing erators. We hope that in one year or two work. Telecom Italia [for example]…must
European Commission figures. years’ time we’ll find an agreement at an reduce energy to offer new services eco-
The EC has been coordinating ef- international level.” Gemma references nomically. In the future, energy consump-
forts within the industry to address the the ITU as one of the bodies working on tion will be very important.”
problem. In June, Huawei signed the standardisation of broadband equipment. New broadband technologies, and no-
Commission’s European code of conduct There are other hurdles, notably de- tably fibre-to-the-home, will shift the
on energy consumption for broadband veloping a reliable measurement model burden of energy consumption from op-
equipment, claiming it was the first equip- for energy consumption. “You can find erators to consumers. “FTTH is very nice
ment manufacturer to do so. Today other [between] 35%…[and] 50% difference in [for operators] because the power con-
signatories include Alcatel-Lucent and results depending on the real condition of sumption…is [nearly] all at the customer
some operators. the equipment,” says Gemma. level,” says Gemma. However, this cre-
The code of conduct—developed by Operators and equipment manufac- ates new challenges, such as placing lim-
the EC along with operators, network turers are also looking into redesigning its on the energy consumed by customer
equipment manufacturers and compo- today’s networks so that they use less premises equipment, he says.
nent manufacturers—sets out to reduce equipment and therefore power. “There Gemma adds that other codes of con-
the energy consumption of broadband are some new ideas, new architectures. duct established by the EC cover tech-
networks to 25 Twh per year, which is [For example] moving from a ring to a nologies such as data centres and digital
equivalent to 11.3 million tons of CO2 mesh network can reduce equipment TV service systems (set-top boxes). And
emissions. The EC estimates that such [use],” says Gemma. Even today, for those VDSL2 network equipment will be able to
a reduction in energy consumption by operators prepared to invest “we are able use a lower power state and standby mode
broadband networks would result in sav- to reduce consumption by 35% [based on when standards are available in the next
ings of E7.5 billion per year. using] all [available] technology on the av- few years.
But even if manufacturers sign the code erage networks of a major operator.” In November 2008, Huawei became the
of conduct and ensure that all new equip- Huawei estimates that copper access first Asian member of the Global e-Sus-
ment complies to its energy consump- networks account for up to 50% of total tainability Initiative (GeSI), a partnership
tion specifications, the scheme needs to fixed network power consumption. It says of ICT companies and industry associa-
be widely adopted by Europe’s operators. an operator can reduce network energy tions committed to creating technologies
Some operators are still dragging their consumption by about 40% by deploying and practices that foster environmental
feet, mindful that one of the downsides of a next-generation access network. Mesh and social sustainability. n
TOTAL TELECOM ENVIRONMENT SPECIAL 15
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