Panelists at RCR Live discussed the role of 5G technology in the telco journey to carbon-neutral networks
With the growing momentum behind the UN’s Race to Zero Campaign, the pressure of rising energy costs, the deployment of power-hungry 5G and the expectations of customers and shareholders, it is now imperative that telcos fully commit to reducing their carbon footprint. But how, exactly, will telcos achieve this? And what strategies and solutions should they be investing in and deploying? Panelists at the RCR Live event in London sought to answer these and other key questions around the telco journey to carbon-neutral networks and how 5G technology might help operators get there.
Some of the most pressing challenges around sustainability in the telco space, according to Francesca Serravalle, head of infrastructure and energy at Vodafone, are the current market dynamics, which show a shrinking revenue and increasing competition, resulting in more demanding customers. Serravalle said that telcos need to make commitments in terms of transformation in order to face all these challenges.
“We have to commit CapEx to transform our network to cloud native, to transform our IT and modernize our OSS and BSS, to define the data strategy and to introduce digital and automation capability,” she said. “More importantly, we also need to innovate and transform the business model. And as we do that, we also have some OpEx concerns and we also have the commitment to deliver on our green agenda. So how do we do that? We do this with a top-down approach: We make sure that sustainability is part of our purpose and our vision.”
The executive noted that one approach in this field would be the modernization of hardware, coupled with the introduction of new software to make sure operators can introduce some intelligence to switch on and off radio resources based on user distribution and traffic demand. Serravalle also highlighted the use of automation technology to enable remote provisioning and the implementation of cloud-native core networks and the deployment of 5G Standalone networks as key factors to optimize and rationalize resources. “We have to look at work across the RAN domain, the transport domain and the core domain,” she added.
For French telco Orange, the public commitment to a new green agenda began in 2020, shared Herve Suquet, vice president of the telco’s energy group. That year, the company announced its Engage 2025 initiative, through which it expects to reduce CO2 emissions by 30% in 2025, compared to 2015. “Recently, we announced a second step on the road to our net zero 2040 commitment, which is to reduce emissions by 45% by 2030 compared to 2020. In order to do this, we have implemented a strategy to use less energy, to reduce costs and to reduce carbon emissions,” Suquet continued. “What as a telco we don’t want to do is to do a profit warning because of energy cost. This is exactly what we want to avoid. And we have seen recently that some telcos were in this bad situation.”
Over in the United Kingdom, Three UK is adopting new technologies with the aim of improving services for its customers while obtaining benefits in terms of energy efficiencies. “We are bringing the new 5G technology that is much more efficient than the previous ones, but what is key is to take incremental steps with the tools that we have available at any point in time, because this is going to be a long-term problem,” explained the company’s Head of RAN, Transport Strategy and Architecture Juan Francisco Redondo.
Samer Vuyyuru, director of the telco division at AWS, provided insight into sustainability from the supply and the demand angle. From a supply-side perspective, he noted that AWS has already converted 85% of its infrastructure to renewable energy, with expectations to reach the 100% mark next year. “So today, if you run in an AWS data center, you are by default, running completely on renewable energy,” the executive said. “Our mission is to make AWS the best place to run networks. And if we don’t address the energy aspects of it, we would have failed to manage.”
Vuyyuru said that telcos can have their back-office applications such as the BSS and the OSS run via cloud infrastructure, which is five times more energy efficient, as it is done using 100% renewable energy. The executive also mentioned a number of initiatives that are already enabling more energy efficient operations by telcos.
“NTT Docomo moved to our custom silicon to run their core,” stated Vuyyuru, claiming that doing so allowed the company to realize a 72% power savings. “Korean operator LG Uplus moved all of their secondary and disaster recovery cores into the public cloud, so they can have disaster recovery on demand when needed only for the period it needs it,” he added.
The AWS executive also highlighted an initiative with a European telco that showed a 28% power reduction with no loss of throughput through the use of AI and machine learning capability. To hear more from Vuyyuru about cloud is key to 5G sustainability, watch his interview with RCR Wireless News’ Sean Kinney.
Speaking to the issue of sustainability and carbon-neutral networks more broadly, Redondo argued that operators need to implement actions to reduce energy consumption in the transport domain, which is responsible for 75-80% of total energy consumption.
Serravalle also pointed to a Vodafone trial in order to demonstrate the benefits of 5G deployments in terms of energy efficiency, commenting that the trial showed that delivering one terabyte of data with 5G requires only 10 kilowatt hours compared to 30 kilowatt hours with 4G
“Now, obviously, as we roll out 5G, then 5G will look like some more intensive requirements technology, because we need new hardware, we need new software, and the traffic will need to pick up to show the value and the benefit from an energy point of view. And according to our analysis, we’ll need to carry at least 0.5 terabytes per day to show those benefits,” continued Serravalle.
