Operators forge ahead with sustainability strategies

Even given the sizeable environmental bandwagon, there has been a marked uptick recently in telcos’ communications about their efforts to improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions. At the same time, several communications service providers (CSPs) are promoting new services to help enterprise customers operate more sustainably. But sizeable obstacles on the road to net zero remain, with telcos looking at a mix of regulation, initiatives with suppliers and digital transformation to help address them. 

Last year’s hike in energy prices turned the spotlight onto telcos’ efforts to increase energy efficiency. “As a telco we don't want…a profit warning because of energy cost,” pointed out Orange’s VP of Energy, Hervé Suquet, when speaking at the RCR Live: Telco reinvention event this week.

Network operations typically account for around 80% of an operator’s energy consumption, which is why network energy efficiency is currently a principal focus. Moves to improve network energy efficiency, however, are not new. Indeed, it was an integral part of 5G network design – an investment that is now paying off, with CSPs seeing the positive impact of 5G and fiber network rollouts on their energy consumption, despite rises in data traffic. 

A Vodafone trial, for example, demonstrated that “delivering one terabyte of data with 5G requires only 10 kilowatt hours of energy compared to 30 kilo kilowatt hours of energy with 4G”, according to Francesca Serravalle, Head of Infrastructure and Energy, Vodafone, speaking at the RCR Live event.

NTT DoCoMo, meanwhile, has set particularly ambitious sustainability targets, and aims to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030, despite an annual 30% growth in data traffic according to Yoshihiro Nakajima, Director, Network Virtualization Platform, Core Network Development Department, R&D Innovation Division, NTT DoCoMo, speaking at TM Forum’s DTW Asia. And it is being helped in part by the virtualization of its core mobile network. 

To date, NTT DoCoMo has virtualized 80% of its core mobile network and expects to fully virtualize it by 2025. And it is counting on a hybrid cloud approach to help improve its energy efficiency. The operator has worked with NEC on a carrier-grade redundancy design for its 5G core network (5GC) hybrid cloud, based on Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) and DoCoMo’s on-premises network functions virtualization (NFV) infrastructure. The design allows NTT DoCoMoto switch between its on-premises NFV and AWS infrastructure. The operatorhas found it can reduce the” power consumption of 5GC by 72% on average using Graviton 3 against x86 processers”, according to Nakajima. 

Regulatory obstacles

Replacing copper and older mobile networks with 5G and fiber infrastructure brings large and demonstrable energy efficiencies, according to operators. However, in some markets regulation is holding them back from phasing out old technology.

“If we want to win the battle of energy efficiency, we need to get rid of 2G and 3G as soon as possible,” said Orange’s Suquet. “[However], every new car which is sold in Europe has an embedded telecommunication solution running on 2G and 3G and we need to support it for 10 years.”

Regulators could do more to help CSPs switch off their copper networks in the face of customer resistance, said Suquet. “You cannot keep a complete [national] copper network up and running because you have ten customers somewhere in the country,” he added.

He also questioned whether telecoms licenses should continue requiring telecoms operators to deliver the best network, everywhere, at all times “even in the middle of the night in the middle of the countryside with no customer. Why? There is no reason today.” If telcos were able to commit instead to a “good enough service”, he contended, then they would be able to manage networks more intelligently and efficiently, “but from a regulatory point of view, when we are benchmarked we can’t.”

Suquet also believes technology companies have a role to play in designing applications that are more energy efficient. “When you go to TikTok videos start automatically, even if you're just scrolling down. It's a nonsense usage.” 

The enterprise opportunity

As CSPs upgrade their infrastructure and use data analytics tools to better understand and manage energy consumption, they are also eyeing the opportunity to help their enterprise customers improve their own sustainability ratings. Certainly, there appears to be an opportunity to do so. A recent CCS survey of 1,000 enterprises found that 82% of respondents see sustainability as driving fundamental transformation in their organization and a board-level priority. At the same time, almost 70% of senior leaders surveyed do not believe their partners sufficiently demonstrate their sustainability efforts.

BT aims to turn the need into a sales opportunity with the launch of its new Digital Carbon Calculator. It is designed to enable enterprises to assess and optimize their potential carbon footprint, based on details of each network device’s power consumption and carbon dioxide emissions. 

Once they have an optimal design, BT can then “order equipment, configure and implement it, supporting customers throughout their full network evolution journey”. BT’s Carbon Network Dashboard then “provides customers with real-time, detailed data and reports on their devices' energy performance in-life across both LAN and OT [operational technology] infrastructure”.

You can read more about telcos’ efforts to improve network energy efficiency in our report The sustainable telco: engineering networks for net zero.