The information and communication technologies (ICT) sector has been the foundation supporting the growth of modern societies. However, especially as we will grow more dependent on them during the Industry 4.0 era, ICT and the way we leverage them must be made more sustainable.
Currently, the ICT industry is responsible for 5-9 percent of electricity consumption and 2 percent of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (the latter of which is equivalent to all air traffic). At this critical juncture, the industry – especially with the growing challenges presented by climate change, namely in emerging markets like Asia – is ramping up efforts towards going green.
However, ensuring broadband sustainability goes beyond just making their use cleaner and greener; it must also ensure that more societal segments can tap into the networks needed to foster their growth. This is what Broadband Zero is all about: to create zero emission networks that also exclude zero people from the immense social, economic and environmental benefits of high-speed broadband.
Yet, Broadband Zero rests heavily on fiber optic technology development. It requires fixed wireless access that can leverage existing 4G radio resources and soon, 5G. As fiber is a more sustainable technology than other types of fixed broadband, it should then be used to create more inclusive and reliable, high-speed internet connectivity to stimulate broader-based economic growth.
ICT – the sustainability multiplier
Despite its own carbon footprint, the ICT sector can even give other industries the opportunity to reduce their own GHG emissions. This is as ICT carries a 7-fold net positive effect on the world’s GHG emissions due to the savings it creates while reducing global CO2 emissions by up to 15 percent.
But the sector must first be able to realize its inherent sustainability potential. Doing so requirestaking meaningful action across the ICT products’ full lifecycle to reduce their ecological impact. This entails: eco product design to optimize the use of raw materials and make components easy to dismantle, repair and repurpose; operational innovations to reduce the environmental impact of transport, packaging, installation, and outside plant design; takeback, refurbish and recycle services to maximize the value of obsolete equipment; and access network technology with high-power efficiency, a less intrusive footprint, and power-saving features
As such all processes and practices are assessed – from design through to end of life – while ensuring the products also help operators and consumers reduce their carbon footprints. By embodying this approach, the ICT sector can realise its inherent potential to make other industries greener. This makes it a sustainability multiplier that will be important for governments across Asia when scaling up their digitalization efforts, an act that accelerated due to COVID-19. In the new normal, key sectors such as transportation, manufacturing and energy production will depend more on broadband to achieve more sustainable gains in productivity and efficiency, to boost future socio-economic growth.
Fiber – the sustainability gamechanger
A key component in the Design for Environment ethos is fiber. Compared to other fixed broadband types, fiber is not only a significantly more climate friendly technology but is also more cost- and power-efficient to operate due to its future-proof scalability and higher capacity. This is since the global shift to fiber technology ensured that the increase in data demand while not leading to a massive increase in emissions. Instead, emissions have actually decreased in recent years as, since 2007, the home broadband power consumption has been reduced by 38 percent while speeds have increased by a factor of 64.
Operators around the world are hence in the process of upgrading older copper and cable networks to deep fiber or full fiber-to-the-home networks. This signals positive news for the future as fiber becomes increasingly indispensable to our broadband needs and, as such, is poised to help deliver mass-market residential services, enterprise services and robust fiber transport for 4G and 5G cell sites.
However, building fiber dependent networks – such as fixed wireless access networks – is just one part of the solution. These networks still need considerable energy to operate and therefore greater efforts must be made to decouple the increasing energy consumption from the future traffic growth. This can be achieved by investing in power-saving innovations that reduce adverse impacts, such as chipsets designed specifically for current and next-generation fiber access technologies. With the latest next-generation design, the power saving can be up to 50% vs. the current legacy design. The chipsets can also be optimized to support time-critical and low-latency transport (which is particularly useful for 5G) and onwards to better enable operators to deliver high-density fiber solutions with much higher speed to the market and more people. Hence, per bit cost dramatically reduced and energy efficiency improved significantly.
Raising broadband sustainability for connected societies
Building fiber networks is just as important as the need to build roads centuries ago. Just like how the development of road infrastructure has been linked to spurring economic activities and – by extension – societal growth, robust network infrastructures must be developed to cope with the demands of today and the future more sustainably. To achieve this level of transformation, the networks’ sustainability must emphasize durability and be long-lasting.
Without a reliable high-speed fixed connection to the internet, it is more challenging for societies to stimulate economic growth and gain needed access to good essential services, such as healthcare and education, during the next, digitally-connect industrial era. Fixed broadband connectivity programs must be thus accelerated; firstly, by ensuring that more households are connected and next, for minimum service levels to be guaranteed.
It is by focusing on achieving sustainability for the environment and for societies where efforts such as Broadband Zero can help ensure that the digital divide does not widen between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ of broadband access. Getting there requires a collaborative push by ICT sector stakeholders – including but not limited to governments, telecommunications operators, and technology service providers – to sustainably innovate networks to the degree that they can reduce ecological strains while supporting socio-economic growth in a more digitally dependent future.
