According to a study conducted by GreenTouch, the net energy consumption in global communication networks can be reduced up to 90 per cent by 2020, even as the network traffic continues to increase.
As per the study results, major efficiency improvements can be delivered across the industry by redesigning the communication networks. The mobile networks could benefit the most from energy efficiency measures, given that they are currently the most inefficient and yet the fastest-growing networks supporting huge amount of data. GreenTouch estimates that going forward mobile networks could realise potential energy-efficiency improvements of up to 1,043 times. The adoption of advance technologies and protocols by the fixed-line and core networks could lead to a 449-fold improvement in efficiency in fixed-access networks and 95-fold improvement in the core networks.
The study underlines that small cells-deployment in dense urban areas, infrastructure-sharing across operators could help operators reduce energy consumption substantially.
