Nokia Siemens launches green push

Nokia Siemens Networks has unveiled a range of equipment and software which it claims will help mobile operators to go green.

The "Energy Efficiency" scheme is based on four main elements: minimising the number of base-station sites used by the operator, minimising the air conditioning needed to cool the stations, utilising the latest base-station technology and using software to optimise radio access.

"The Energy Efficiency solution makes good, green business sense," said Ari Lehtoranta, head of the radio access business unit at Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), on Tuesday. "By bringing state-of-the art products and software together with our services portfolio for operators, we can reduce adverse environmental impact while also generating considerable cost savings for our operator customers."

Nokia and Siemens launched their joint networking venture earlier this year. Analyst Jeremy Green, of Ovum, said on Wednesday that NSN's move was welcome. "The company claims that it has actually been a green supplier for some years, but has not been good at communicating its achievements," he said. "It acknowledges that others have been better at drawing attention to their own take on environmental issues." Ericsson, for example, published a white paper on similar themes some time ago.

NSN claimed that the Energy Efficiency range could cut the energy consumption of a base-station site by up to 70 percent. Cutting air conditioning alone — raising the ambient temperature in the room where a base station is housed from 25˚C to 40˚C — can reduce energy consumption at that site by 30 percent, NSN suggested.

"Nokia Siemens claims that its base station is the most energy-efficient in the industry, and uses 25 percent less energy than the next best model," said Green. "NSN is also attempting to reduce its own carbon footprint, even though it estimates that 80 percent of its products' impact comes from their lifelong use, rather than their production."

Green also said that NSN claimed to have held 20,000 virtual meetings last year in order to cut its CO2 emissions. "Sadly, it is unable to furnish any information as to how much this has allowed it to reduce executive travel," he added.

Nokia and Siemens recently stated that their joint venture would run until 2013 at the earliest.