Addressing climate change has never been more critical than it is today, as extreme weather events which are linked to global warming are intensifying and increasing in frequency. The past decade has been the warmest on record causing extreme weather events such as flooding, heatwaves, droughts, and forest fires. World leaders agree that climate change needs to be tackled and collective action is needed if we are going to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5oC to avoid a climate catastrophe. This urgent need to address climate change has seen world leaders and over 25,000 delegates from 200 countries gather at COP26 in Glasgow.
Everybody, and every industry has a role to play in tackling climate change, none more so than the telecoms industry. Keri Gilder, CEO, Colt recently addressed this in her speech at TM Forum’s Digital Transformation World where she stated that if the telecoms industry was a country, it would be the third largest polluter behind the USA and China in terms of emissions. The majority of those emissions come from the huge amount of electricity needed to power everything from air conditioning units in datacentres, to the power consumed by telecom masts.
Autonomous networks (AN) and automation have a huge role to play in the future of Communications Service Providers’ (CSPs) networks. Not only will they enable operators to deliver new revenue streams and take advantage of the $700 billion 5G B2B2x opportunity, reduce costs, improve efficiencies, and deliver better customer experiences but they can also dramatically reduce CSPs’ ecological footprint and help them achieve net zero emissions. CSPs around the world are taking their commitment to tackling climate change seriously with Vodafone recently committing to net zero for their own operations by 2030 and for their full carbon footprint by 2040 and Airtel announcing that they will achieve net-zero carbon emissions no later than by 2050. Making networks autonomous and deploying Artificial Intelligence (AI) will therefore be crucial for them hitting these goals. The World Economic Forum estimates that Autonomous Networks (AN)have the potential to reduce 30,000 tonnes of CO2 globally due to fewer field visits alone.
In 2019, the TM Forum set up the Autonomous Networks Program to provide an industry-led approach to enable end-to-end network automation. The program set out to enable CSPs to deliver truly connected B2B2x digital services that depend on massive connectivity, low latency and high reliability by developing a common vision, framework and interfaces (APIs) for autonomous networks. CSPs are now deploying this framework with some outstanding results, not only in terms of the deployment of new services but also in reducing their environmental footprint.
The rapid development of the global digital economy has seen the demand for the construction and use of data centres rise year on year, resulting in the energy used by data centres accounting for more than 1.3% of total global energy consumption. Of that, around 30% of that energy is used in cooling systems within data centres. China Mobile has recently piloted the AN framework to improve the efficiency of its cooling systems using closed loops to automatically configure them and ensure the optimal temperature and air conditions are met. Their pilot showed that deploying AN in their cooling systems reduced energy consumption by 8-15% which equates to an estimated saving of 220 kWh per year.
China Mobile took the same approach to their base stations where reducing energy consumption was a priority, especially as data consumption is increasing amongst consumers, which was exponentially increasing the amount of power needed to run them. Network traffic volumes vary between peak and off-peak hours, yet many base stations keep running at peak capacity so power consumption was not dynamically adjusted based on traffic volume which results in a mass amount of energy wasted. By deploying automation, China Mobile was able to reduce their base station energy consumption by 16.88%, which if adopted globally, CSPs could save over 100 million kWh of power every year.
Autonomous Networks therefore have a clear role to play in making telcos greener and helping them achieve net zero. Not only do they allow CSPs to reduce their energy consumption, but they will also enable networks to be self-healing, reducing the amount of site visits needed. The intelligence provided by the network will also mean that when a site visit is needed, the engineer with know in advance what the problem is and what tools are required to fix and address the issues. Autonomous Networks will also have far reaching societal impacts, by powering smart cities, smart societies and smart industries, meaning that people will work and interact differently in the future. More people will be able to work from home, travel less and use greener digital alternatives which will play a massive role in protecting the planet and safeguarding it for future generations.
I am hugely excited about the future of AI, automation and autonomous networks and the role they have to play in saving our planet. I hope you are just excited and get involved with our world-leading collaboration program.
