The concept of sustainability is the idea that something is capable of being maintained at a steady level. For example; when I go Nordic walking, I try to sustain a speed of 6km/hr. I know that this is not very fast, but it is the speed I can keep up for 15~20km without exhausting myself. If I try to go faster, it works for a short while, but then I discover I have used my energy too fast and could end up getting the bus home.

When we consider the idea of sustainable telecommunications networks we have the same dilemma. Our networks can be made super powerful everywhere by massive over dimensioning, but then we will have to consume a lot of energy continually to keep them available. Clearly this is not acceptable or affordable.

The idea of sustainable infrastructures is where the capital investment of natural resources to create and operate such networks is kept to a low level where it does not exhaust the available resources and is reusable or at least recyclable. Similarly, on the operational side we need to ensure that running infrastructures use only the minimum energy that they need and even that should be reduced in quiet times if there is not much traffic being handled.

Sustainable for the future

The United Nations have a list of 17 sustainable goals with many clear ambitions to support people in their lives and to reduce our impact on the environment. Clearly there are interdependencies between these goals and, while the priorities obviously start with addressing poverty, food shortages and health, they quickly identify aspects of education and equality which are key concepts that require access to and sharing of information on a large scale. The communication infrastructures are facilitators of education.

The ICT challenge

The evolution of telecommunications networks is always a techno-economic balancing act between the costs of providing the connectivity versus the costs of the materials and equipment needed to deliver those services at a reasonable affordable price to the consumers. When I started working in Telecoms, we had only to balance the cost of copper cables to the houses and local exchanges. When Copper was expensive, we used more local exchanges, as copper became cheaper we concentrated the exchanges in one location with longer copper lines. One of the biggest costs was where you put the cables – underground was the most expensive solution!!

Today we have totally new infrastructures that resemble computer networks more than the traditional telephone networks. However, we are still doing a balancing act between the transmission, storage and processing of the data in transit. Today’s network must know what type of communication it is supporting and, if it is voice or real-time communications then it must be delivered quickly. If the consumer is streaming content and looking at it, or listening to it, they can be very sensitive to interruptions. If the communication is the download of a large data file (maybe a movie for watching later) it is not so time critical and can be stored and forwarded. This type of traffic management allows some averaging of loads and traffic in the networks; however, it is not the full answer to the sustainability challenge.

Sustainable operations

We are now entering the era of “intelligent“ equipment in the infrastructures. This means different elements of the infrastructure will have capabilities to optimise their own configuration to deliver the best service while consuming the least energy. In principle this is wonderful as it allows us to have the best of both worlds, but in practice it greatly increases the complexity of the infrastructure, and dramatically increases the signalling and connectivity traffic that must be exchanged within the network – between network elements – to ensure they do not interfere with each other and actually reduce service quality. We are only learning now if the total improvements from these incredibly capable infrastructures compensate for the additional cost of resources and energy to maintain them. Eventually they will but we may need to learn a lot more about how intelligent systems behave and interact to be sure.

Quo vadis?

The challenge when addressing any large-scale task is always where to start – you cannot resolve everything at the same time so you have to pick some priorities. In the telecommunications industry we are going through a period of unbelievable development and growth. Since the late 1990s the capabilities of the networks and the personal devices have exploded and people today are now expected to be carrying a device that allows them to communicate, entertain and even monitor their health.

We are continually chipping away at providing better, cheaper, simpler ways of ensuring everyone gets the services they need, and can be digitally “included” in society, while making sure we are minimising the energy and resources consumed. You can help by buying devices that can be fixed so we can keep our mobile phones for at least three years.