Sustainability and the impact of energy consumption on the climate are becoming urgent issues for the wireless industry. To assess how energy considerations will affect mobile networks and whether emerging technologies can help to minimise the industry’s energy footprint, Mobile World Live conducted an international online survey of mobile industry professionals.
The results show that most companies in the mobile industry are serious about setting energy reduction targets, but the continued growth in data traffic and subscribers is likely to mean that energy consumption will become a limiting factor in network deployments in the near future. The survey also indicates that the industry is generally positive about the potential for network virtualization and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to help reduce energy consumption, but much less certain about the energy impact of edge deployments.
