Nokia and Orange unveiled a new energy-saving technology called Extreme Deep Sleep on Tuesday February 20. The solution which leverages Nokia MantaRay’s energy saving automation, with artificial intelligence and machine learning, will allow the French telecoms group’s mobile networks to automatically go into standby during periods of non-existent traffic. Orange should deploy it in the second half of 2024.

Arnaud Vamparys, director of technological innovation at Orange Europe, said that this innovation reflects “ the need for cooperation within the ecosystem if we want to reduce the environmental footprint of our industry and make our networks as efficient as possible. in energy as possible. This project is part of our ambition to reduce our CO2 emissions by 45% in 2030 compared to 2020 across all scopes 1, 2 and 3, as defined in our “Lead the future” strategic plan .”

The new saving mode, called “zero traffic, zero watts,” detects when the network has low traffic and shuts down key hardware elements of selected radio units to reduce energy costs. Nokia estimates that this solution can divide the consumption of radio units by eight. This is the latest project on which the two companies have collaborated to achieve their shared sustainability ambitions.

According to the Global Association of Telephone Operators (GSMA), energy costs represent between 20% and 40% of a telecommunications company’s operational expenses. An even higher figure in regions with high diesel consumption such as Southeast Asia and Africa. This is a trend that is likely to increase as 5G deployment continues, since a typical 5G site requires up to 70% more power to operate compared to a 5G station. base deploying a combination of 2G, 3G and 4G radios.

In Africa in particular, where energy supply issues remain one of the obstacles to the provision of telecommunications services, the Extreme Deep Sleep solution represents an operational asset. Not only does it guarantee consumers availability of the mobile network and telecoms service when needed, but it also allows a reduction in energy-related charges for the operator.

In 2021, 92% of telcos surveyed by the GSMA considered sustainability and energy efficiency very or extremely important to their network transformation strategy. This is also the reason why research in this direction is increasing. The switch to solar power has certainly represented progress, but there still seems to be a lot of room for improvement to reduce the bill.

Source: Agency EcoFin