Turning Telco Green

Is Green good business? Is it a fad? Is it sustainable? Every telecom and IT supplier is talking up their green credentials. “Sustainable” models for telecom and IT are the rage and even conferences specifically dedicated to Green IT/computing/telecom are popping up. Commercials on TV advertise the business sense of tree hugging, saving “40 percent of electrical costs.” What does this mean to the telecom community? A lot, from the social consciousness to the bottom line, and it should not be ignored. In fact, it represents the opportunity to take a look at how the providers are doing business, and maybe doing it smarter (faster, cheaper, AND green). IT is the model to follow.

The IT industry has already picked up on the need to be more energy efficient. One study shows that for every watt reduction in power usage, two additional watts are saved in cooling. Quite a bargain. Extrapolate the savings out when you realize that according to the U.S. General Services Administration, today large consolidated data centers alone use more than 5 percent of all electricity consumed in the United States. And these data centers are increasingly housing applications used by telcos and enterprises to meet their communication needs.

The impact of going green can be dramatic as reported by the EPA in its Fall 2008 Intergovernmental Solutions Newsletter “green IT”:

“In January 2005, EPA received the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) silver certification from the U.S. Green Building Council for the EPA’s large data center, the National Computing Center (NCC). Through strategic improvements and operational modifications made at the NCC since then, total annual power consumption has been reduced by 20 percent (4.5 billion BTUs), despite a rise in the number of servers in use.” So even accommodating additional growth in servers, the EPA was able to reduce its annual power usage by 20 percent. That is a sustainable model for growth, and savings.”

The report continues, looking ahead:

“By 2011, the trajectories (using the measured results of our case studies) showed significant savings over current trends.

For example, we demonstrated that with legacy retrofits, data centers can:

• Save between 59.9 and 64.6 billion kWh/year
• Save up to $4.5 billion annually
• Cut 40.9 million metric tons of carbon (more than 7 million cars)

With a combination of both new commissions and legacy retrofits, they can:

• Save between 64.2 and 68.9 billion kWh/year annually.
• Save up to $4.8 billion annually
• Cut 43.6 million metric tons of carbon (almost 8 million cars) annually.”

With savings of between $4.5 and $4.8 billion annually, the question is not if going green will save money, the question is, how can telecom benefit from going green, besides the PR benefit? “Networking” ─ once you get past the access and transport networks ─ is increasingly moving in the direction of software: applications, services and in particular, subscriber data management. Even from a platform perspective, some vendors are embracing the open concept which benefits from the IT lessons learned on efficiency.

“Cool rooms” and the ubiquitous raised floor to house telecom and IT equipment is fast becoming a thing of the past. Instead, the model is to direct the cooling specifically to the equipment that needs it, and only to the degree it is needed. Closed racks that are individually temperature controlled with cooling vents ducted directly into the rack require more intelligence in the overall HVAC (heating, ventilation and cooling) system, but those systems are available today and are already in use.

As the telcos complete their conversion to IP and Ethernet and move to create value-add on their network infrastructure, the next battleground will be in the server farms. As the size and build-out of central offices shrink, some of the remaining space could be used for application servers. The sooner telcos embrace the IT model on data center and server farm efficiency, the lower their cost of service rollout and management and faster time to market will be.

Chris Nicoll is a principal at Nicoll Consulting Inc. His more than 20 years experience working for telecom equipment vendors, carriers and as an industry analyst roles have helped him build expertise in evaluating competitor strengths and weaknesses, developing market messaging and positioning, and building multinational cross-organization relationships to develop, coordinate and implement corporate strategies. Nicoll previously worked at Alcatel-Lucent/Lucent Technologies, Current Analysis, Visual Networks, Netrix and Tymnet.

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