LTE forces telcos to rethink power

As telcos begin to deploy power-hungry long-term evolution (LTE) networks and prepare for the incoming carbon tax this year, they will be looking to cut down power costs, according to Emerson Network Power's director of Australian telecom business, Ross Hammond.

Telstra, Optus and Vodafone are all currently upgrading base stations across the country as part of, or in preparation for, LTE network deployments. Yet, Hammond said that the new equipment stored in these facilities came with more power demands.

"The LTE is a little more power hungry. A lot of customers are having to do upgrades. They don't have enough power, [so] there's a fair amount of refresh," he told ZDNet Australia at MediaConnect's Kickstart 2012 conference.

Hammond said that Emerson had been in discussions with telcos about upgrading their network facility to tackle this problem.

[We're] currently talking to a number of our customers about how we can grow their facilities and grow their equipment," he said, with companies expecting to save between 10 to 15 per cent on power.

While Emerson has been talking to the big mobile telcos on LTE, it's also been engaging with NBN Co on network facilities. Emerson last year scored a $100 million deal with NBN Co to provide 10 facilities in mainland cities for network storage. Although NBN Co has been reluctant to reveal what these facilities will actually be used for, it is widely believed these will be datacentres for the points of interconnect for the National Broadband Network (NBN).

Hammond said that Emerson had managed to coordinate the roll-out of these facilities with NBN Co so all 10 were being constructed at once. He said that although the terrain was varied across Australia at all the sites, every box provided to NBN Co was exactly the same.

Although Emerson didn't have any further deals lined up with NBN Co at this point, Hammond said Emerson was still keen for more work with the company, in particular around the Telstra deal that will give NBN Co access to Telstra ducts, pipes and facilities that may require upgrades for NBN Co.

"We're talking to NBN Co, we're talking to Telstra and we're talking to the integrators."

Emerson was also keen to work with Optus and Vodafone for the upgrade of their network facilities.

"We're looking to get back into those accounts," he said. "[We] need to reacquaint ourselves with those accounts."

Josh Taylor travelled to Kickstart as a guest of MediaConnect.