Alcatel-Lucent’s R&D division, Bell Labs, today launcheda green communications initiative dubbed Green Touch, a consortium promising tomake comms networks 1,000 times more energy efficient than they are today.
According to Alcatel-Lucent, a reduction of this size willbe the equivalent of powering the world’s networks, including the Internet,with the same amount of energy that they currently consume in 24 hours.
Founding industry members include comms giants AT&T, ChinaMobile and O2 owner Telefónica, alongside academic and government research labsincluding the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and France’s CEA-LETIApplied Research Institute for Microelectronics.
The consortium’s founding members have called for thenetworking industry to “join forces in reaching this ambitious target”.
In setting their targets, boffins at Bell Labs claim thatcurrent ICT networks have the potential to be 10,000 times more efficient thantoday.
“With the boom in broadband usage, ICT energy consumption israpidly increasing and immediate steps need to be taken to mitigate [this]impact,” said IDC senior vice president and general manager for enterprisecomputing, network, consumer, telecom and sustainability, Vernon Turner.
Bell Labs president Jeong Kim added: “We are witnessing … afundamental shift in thinking about ICT from a focus on optimising networks formaximum capacity to optimising them for energy efficiency.”
The consortium will meet officially for the first time inFebruary to set out a five year plan to deliver a reference networkarchitecture and demonstrate key components.
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