Building out sustainable networks key to telcos

Sustainability is proving to be a tricky issue for many telcos, but new market moves are set to make it easier for them. Business technology journalist Antony Savvas looks at how technology is helping them map out a sustainability roadmap.

More than half (56%) of telco CEOs say increasing sustainability is one of their highest priorities for their organisation over the next two to three years, a higher percentage than the 48% of CEOs across all industries. That’s from the just-published IBM Institute for Business Value’s annual CEO study.

While a priority, the study also revealed telco CEOs view sustainability as one of the top three “challenges” for their organisation over the same time period, next to cyber security and industry regulation.

Nearly 60% of telco CEOs point to unclear ROI (return on investment) and economic benefits around sustainability, followed by a lack of reliable data insights (49%), regulatory barriers (49%) and technological barriers (38%), in potentially hindering their ability to implement sustainability strategies.

Sustainable technology

That said, some of the technology now being developed or rolled out by telcos will help them meet sustainability expectations among partners and customers. BT recently announced a trial of a new “hyper-sensitive quantum antenna technology”, using “excited atomic states” that could boost the capability of next generation 5G and IoT (Internet of Things) networks.

Atomic radio frequency (RF) receiver technology represents a revolutionary new way of detecting radio waves that could find much weaker signals than conventional receivers. The receiver works by using a quantum effect called “electromagnetically induced transparency” to form a highly sensitive electric field detector.

BT’s trial represents the first time a digitally-encoded message has been received on a 3.6GHz (5G) carrier frequency. Previously, simple audio has been received using much higher frequencies, but this trial is the first industrial demonstration using digital modulation within one of BT’s EE main commercial 5G frequency ranges.

“This new type of receiver may reduce mobile network energy consumption, enable IoT devices to become more cost efficient and longer lasting, and support lower-cost smart cities and smart agriculture,” says BT.

100% coverage?

Theoretically, over 100x more sensitive than traditional receivers, the atomic RF receiver can be positioned in a passive optical receiver in hard-to-reach locations, “potentially bringing mobile networks closer to achieving 100% coverage and helping to close the connectivity divide”, BT adds.

Researchers at BT Labs in Martlesham, UK are now working to miniaturise the equipment and find the optimum RF modulation and signal processing for potential use in future generations of radio networks.

Sharad Sharma, head of networks at NTT DATA UK, says of the technology, “The potential of these quantum radio trials is exciting for businesses and consumers alike. With the rapid growth of 5G and preliminary rumours around 6G, the number and scale of connected devices will see exponential growth in coming years, which will necessitate efficiencies being built into the network, even at the component level.”

He adds, “By cutting energy consumption and enabling IoT cost efficiency, atomic radio frequency technology can push businesses forward in new, exciting directions, giving them almost real-time access to data and information.”

MEC expansion

To illustrate the direction of travel further when it comes to lower power consumption, Juniper Research has predicted that global MEC (Multi-access edge computing) spend will grow from $8.8 billion (€8.26 billion) in 2022, to $22.7 billion (€21.31 billion) by 2027.

This growth of 260% will be driven by increasing requirements for on-premise machine learning and low-latency connectivity and lower power connectivity enabled by 5G technology, says Juniper Research.

MEC is a network architecture that moves processing power and digital content to mobile network edges to provide faster data processing to end users. As the data doesn’t have to be sent to a distant cloud first for processing, service providers and customers can see their bandwidth and energy footprint reduced.

Juniper says the delivery of digital content, including video streaming, gaming and immersive reality, will benefit from the geographical proximity of MEC nodes, and increase the value proposition by improving video caching and computational offload.

It urges operators to maximise the user reach of MEC by focusing on urban deployments first.

Juniper reckons that over 3.4 million MEC nodes will be deployed by 2027, rising from less than 1 million in 2022. It identifies autonomous vehicles and smart cities as key beneficiaries of increasing MEC roll-outs.

It added that telco partnerships with the likes of AWS, Google, IBM and Microsoft will be “essential” in achieving the growth of MEC node roll-outs. Vodafone, for instance already has a developing MEC alliance with AWS in the US, the UK and Germany.

Juniper forecasts that over 1.6 billion mobile users will have access to services underpinned by MEC nodes by 2027, rising from 390 million in 2022.

Phones

In a more tangible telco sustainability move for consumers, Orange has said that its ‘Re’ scheme, aimed at giving old phones a second life, will soon launch in Moldova, Slovakia, Romania and Spain.

Antony Savvas

It is planned that all European markets where Orange operates in will take part in the scheme by the end of 2022. This follows the initial introduction of the scheme in France 1.5 years ago, and its recent expansion into the markets of Luxembourg, Belgium and Poland.

All these moves show telcos can make a value contribution to a more sustainable communications and digital content industry.

The author is Antony Savvas, a global freelance business technology journalist.

Comment on this article below or via Twitter: @VanillaPlus OR @jcvplus

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