Bit is the basic unit of digital information. Groups of them are delivered along MBB and FBB communication pipes into every corner of the world with the momentum they get from Watt, which we normally use to represent the basic unit for measuring energy consumption.

Global data (Bit) demand and consumption has increased thousands of times over the past decade. The traffic growth keeps pushing up the energy consumption and energy cost.Nowadays, in the accelerated MBB and FBB era, traffic grows at an even faster pace. ICT service providers are all facing the challenge of increasingly higher energy consumption, as we all have already been aware of the divergence between the very fast highly increased energy cost and flat revenue increase, which is quite similar as the divergence between highly increased network traffic and their service revenue. It’s commonly understood that changes have to be made for the sustainable development the Telecom industry, targeting at improved energy efficiency, less power consumption, higher operational efficiency, and much less operational expenditures. ICT service providers are taking actions, Huawei as well, as the pioneer on the ICT energy efficiency improvement and carbon reduction arena and leader in the field.

Momentum behind ICT Energy Saving and Carbon Emissions Reduction

Twenty years ago, the world population was 5.6 billion. There were less than 100 million mobile users, only 200 thousand base stations, and fewer than 50 million connections global-wise. By the end of the first half of 2015, the global population had already exceeded 7.3 billion. There were 4.8 billion mobile users, 6.6 million mobile base stations, and over 8 billion connections. For the next 20 years, it is expected that the world’s population will increase by 1.5 billion more, and ICT service providers will need to provide more, better, and higher throughput communication and data services with the rapid development of the ICT industry in the Big Data era.

With the fast growth of data traffic, the ICT industry has become the world’s fifth largest energy consuming industry, with its energy consumption and carbon emission that account for 2-4% of the world’s total and are still increasing at a rate of 4-5% annually.Statistic report shows, in 2014 Telecom operators’ total OPEX exceeded USD 1600B, within which energy cost contributed about 20%, reaching as high as USD 300B.  With this high OPEX saving potential, and the fact that service providers’ energy cost saving will directly contribute to their net profit improvement, service providers are putting more emphasis on energy saving, despite of their good will on social responsibility and end-user’s intensified favor towards greener service providers.

ICT Service Providers in Action

In the past several years, we have seen more and more ICT service providers placing increasingly amount of effort on energy saving  and emissions reduction, and most of the major service providers have formulated strategic energy conservation and emissions reduction goals.

Telefonica set up  a 30% energy saving target for 2015 compared with 2008; Vodafone  aims at having its 2020 carbon emissions 50% lower than in 2006; Telenor announced its 40% carbon emissions target for 2016 comparing with 2007; France Telecom has made a goal of reducing its 2020 carbon emissions by 20% compared to 2006; Deutsche Telekom AG targets at  20% carbon emissions reduction in 2020 comparing with 1995; Verizon estimated that its 2017 carbon emissions would be 20% lower than in 2007 through its continuous efforts; and British Telecom even went one step further in setting a goal of reducing its 2020 carbon emissions by 80% compared to 1996.

With well formulated execution plan, major ICT service providers took all possible actions heading towards their targets along the common strategic direction of energy saving and carbon emission reduction.

Vodafone pointed out that one of the ICT’s primary future development challenges is to lower down the energy consumption of communication networks. In recent years Vodafone implemented staged upgrades to its 2G and 3G equipment, upgraded many old power supply equipment, and implemented energy management for many networks; it has already achieved an estimated 590TWh in energy savings since 2006.

Telstra"s energy infrastructure executive director, John Romano, stated that Telstra already used 98% ultra-efficient power systems to replace its older 90% efficiency power  systems, and already slashed down the energy consumption by 75% through high efficiency energy infrastructure modernization on its network. This modernization alone can allow a typical telecom site to save 14,000 KWH/year, and the project ROI cycle is less than 1.5 years. Additionally, Telstra introduced solar power into its telecom sites. It is not only about the utilization of clean energy for energy saving and environmental protection, it also improved the reliability of its power supply infrastructure and network services.

Mobilink, VimpelCom Group’s Pakistan subsidiary, shared with us that along with the large scale expansion of its network, Mobilink deployed hybrid power solutions instead of the traditional dual D.G. solution. It significantly reduced its fuel and energy costs. As many other leading ICT service providers, Mobilink also deployed the advanced NetEco smart energy management system to visualize it energy consumption, and manage the use of energy effectively. All these efforts got paid back, and Mobilink achieved the annual OPEX saving of USD 40M.

Paolo Gemma, International Telecommunication Union"s (ITU) WP3/5 chairman, stated that as the internationally recognized standardization organization with an important goal of energy saving, ITU is committed to keeping improving energy efficiency and reducing carbon emission in the ICT industry. ITU has drafted its network energy efficiency standard based on NEE/NIEE/NTEE, the common language to help the industry measure and improve network energy efficiency.

Collaboration for Greener and Better Connected World

Huawei has always taken ICT industry’s energy saving and emissions reduction as its own responsibility, being active in the field, working with all different stakeholders in industrial standardization, energy efficiency KPI definition, consultation, solution design, solution offering, project implementation, etc. Huawei has always been open-minded in solution innovation, collaborating with ICT service providers for energy efficiency improvement, and has always taken energy efficiency as a key element in its network architecture design, site architecture design, solution design, and product design.

As the pioneer in ICT network transformation, Huawei has always been proposing its advanced ALL-IP network architecture. ALL-IP architecture, along with Software-Defined Network, Network Function Virtualization, not only simplified the network, it also improved network equipment’s utilization by over 60% and reduced overall energy consumption by 30%.

In network and site solution design, Huawei is leading the way with Single strategy. Multi-technology Single RAN, multi-mode wideband antenna, multi energy source and multi output power systems greatly simplified the telecom network and site rollout and evolution, improved network and infrastructure resources sharing, and dramatically reduced network energy consumption. In the site solution domain, Huawei’s optimized site layout design, super high efficient and flexible power system design and cooling design have been the mainstream solution selected by most of the leading ICT service providers and deployed worldwide.

Visualized energy utilization and effective energy efficiency management is critical for optimized utilization, control and management of energy flows throughout the networks. With massive site construction driven by the large scale 3G/4G network deployment and future 4.5G/5G evolution, automated, simplified and unified infrastructure and energy management become more important. It is the source and foundation of long-term business sustainability. Huawei smart energy efficiency management technology has changed the traditional reactive O&M model into proactive and preventive O&M model, and changes the labor intensive infrastructure management model into an automated, remote, highly effective and low cost management model. Generally speaking, the use of smart energy efficiency management technology can improve O&M efficiency by over 50%, eliminate unnecessary site visits by over 80%, and greatly improve the operation efficiency and network reliability, at a fraction of the cost ICT service provides used to spend.

In the past decades, Huawei has kept investing in advanced energy saving technologies and customer value based solution innovation. Over 500 patents in the energy domain and industry’s highest efficiency power systems demonstrated its technology leadership and commitment in energy saving, carbon emission reduction and long-term sustainability.

The world is changing fast. New technologies are emerging at a speed we never experienced before. It’s not only the power electronics technology that matters for energy efficiency. By leveraging its unique technology leadership across industries and across domains, Huawei has already incorporated its advanced digitalization technologies, networking technologies, power electronics technologies, artificial intelligence technologies and large scale software technologies into telecom energy and infrastructure domain. Huawei is well prepared to grow with ICT service providers in the ultra broadband, ubiquitous access and big data era, building GREENER and BETTER Connected World together.