Thinking green, proving green

Going green isn't just about good intentions. Service providers looking to deploy green network technology need to make bottom-line sense of their plans. They also need to make sure it all fits into their long-term strategic efforts, and especially that it delivers the green benefits that equipment makers claim.

Just a few years ago, development of environmentally friendly mobile network gear was limited to one or two base station models promising lower power consumption and a reduced carbon footprint. Promotion of green technology took off at a gallop during 2007 and 2008, though the recent economic recession and some backlash against the environmental movement (on display at the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen) served up reminders that, like any other technology progression, the green evolution faces hurdles.

Still, green technology has advanced from a vendor hobby to a service provider interest. Ricky Watts, chief technology officer of network planning and consulting firm Aircom International, said service providers have acquired a stronger sense of social responsibility, but that the primary driver for their interest is monetary.

"It's because they're getting more opex savvy, and power consumption is a major cost consideration," Watts said. "Some of these companies are the largest power consumers in the countries where they operate networks."

Watts added that service providers also have begun to look beyond their base stations to reassess power consumption and environmental friendliness across their entire network infrastructures.

Jorge Fuenzalida, vice president of consulting firm inCode Wireless, agreed that the green assessments are popping up throughout the network. "Data centers, for example, are a wonderful idea to take gear out of the enterprise and allow cloud access to those resources, but the data centers themselves use mass amounts of power," he said.

Ultimately, the most innovative service providers may cultivate a business opportunity from their studies. Watts suggested that one service provider could share its power infrastructure with other service providers, a notion that wouldn't hurt them competitively because they wouldn't be sharing radios.

Yet, before service providers master the environmental issues arising from their power-hungry networks, they must better understand the green technology they are set to procure. Watts said it's important for equipment vendors to produce green metrics on their gear as part of their own testing and validation process, as well as conformance testing to show the new gear works within the broader system infrastructure.

Fuenzalida added that green metrics such as carbon footprints need to be carefully calculated. "It's like reading the nutrition label on food," he said. "Something says it's fat-free, but does it have a thousand calories? What are you getting out of it?"

Detailed vendor test information is a good start, but as the mobile industry gets greener, service providers may need to rely on more independent verification, as well as some broader industry agreement on what kind of green metrics and goals they should be pursuing. "You need some standards around this, or some kind of information grid, but no grid exists," Fuenzalida said. "Some kind of operator consortium--something along the lines of the Mobile Marketing Association--needs to help guide the development of that grid."

Eventually, the process of adopting green technology and environmentally progressive platform features will become easier as service providers move further away from their legacy network elements and into 4G and future network generations.

"The older the technology, the less efficient it is," Watts said. "GSM radios radiate full power all the time. With LTE, power consumption is more of a consideration. The radios power up and down." However, LTE networks are also intended for a world in which mobile networks are increasingly loaded with all forms of content, thus increasing to overall power demand.

The current backlash against the overall green movement should not deter service providers from pursuing green. If anything, they may need to broaden their horizons to better study other aspects of the movement, such as the use of alternative energy resources like wind. However, as they attempt to makes sense of their options, dollars will guide them. How they reduce their carbon footprint, Watts said, will have to fit in with reducing their total cost of ownership.