Green Communication Brings New Opportunities for Development

The huge energy consumption in the operation of communication networks not only causes environmental pollution but also brings high operating costs to enterprises. Therefore, greenization will become an inevitable trend in the future development of the communication industry. Achieving green development of communication networks will not only actively undertake environmental protection responsibilities to achieve energy-saving targets but also reduce network operating costs and improve industry competitiveness.

As the communication industry enters a brand-new stage of green development, it brings about new opportunities for companies both upstream and downstream of the communication industry chain. As a crucial component of the communication network, the core network concentrates controls, connections, and management of all user services within the entire network. As a result, it requires a correspondingly large-capacity power supply system and cooling and heat dissipation system, inevitably becoming a significant contributor to energy consumption in the communication network. Therefore, optimizing the supporting infrastructure such as the power supply system and cooling system of core network data centers to reduce energy consumption is crucial for achieving the green development goal in the communication industry.

From the perspective of energy consumption distribution in the entire communication network, the energy consumption of base station equipment also accounts for a large proportion during the operation of the communication network. There are millions of communication base stations worldwide, and the primary equipment as well as the supporting air conditioning and power consumption consume over tens of billions of kilowatt-hours each year, accounting for most of the power consumption in the communication industry. Therefore, energy-saving and consumption reduction of base stations is also an urgent problem to be solved in the development of green communication.

In addition, there are hundreds of millions of broadband network terminals worldwide, which also bring about huge power consumption. After adopting the “optical fiber in, copper out” access network, the energy-saving effects of the network side and terminal side can be combined. Each household can save about 19 kilowatt-hours per year, and 1 million households can save 19 million kilowatt-hours per year. If fossil fuel power generation is used, it is equivalent to 0.9 million tons of carbon emissions (based on global average electricity carbon conversion values), which is approximately equal to the carbon sequestration value of 400,000 trees. Currently, there are over 400 million broadband users using copper wires and coaxial cables globally. If they are all migrated to fiber optic broadband, it can reduce at least 3.6 million tons of carbon emissions annually.

Therefore, to achieve the goal of green development in the communication network, it is necessary to comprehensively carry out green transformation of the communication network. Green communication will also become an inevitable trend in the industry, and provide telecommunication industry enterprises with new opportunities for development.