Tag Archive for: Sustainability

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NGMN’s new recommendations on better energy consumption measurement in virtualised networks

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Dusseldorf Germany, 04 April 2024. Today’s publication by the Next Generation Mobile Networks Alliance (NGMN), titled ‘Green Future Networks: Metering in Virtualised RAN Infrastructure,’ offers key recommendations to the industry regarding the measurement of energy consumption in virtualised RAN networks. The publication was jointly developed by the NGMN membership, including Mobile Network Operators (MNOs), vendors and research institutes.

“Addressing the challenge of managing and minimising energy consumption is paramount within our industry,” remarked Arash Ashouriha, Chairman of the NGMN Alliance Board and SVP Group Technology at Deutsche Telekom. “Through this publication, the NGMN Alliance delivers vital recommendations for industry standards, facilitating more precise and real-time estimations of energy consumed by virtualised or cloud-native network functions.”

“Sustainability is a considerable concern for MNOs and their customers,” emphasised Laurent Leboucher, Member of the NGMN Alliance Board and Group CTO at Orange. “Accurate measurement of energy usage in our networks and associated carbon emissions is essential. This publication marks a crucial stride towards fostering greater transparency in energy consumption within virtualised infrastructure.”

This latest NGMN publication highlights the necessity of enhancing current 3GPP Virtual Network Function (VNF) / Cloud Network Function (CNF) energy consumption estimation frameworks for more precise measurement of energy consumption by VNF/CNF on shared IT/Cloud infrastructure. The publication offers several recommendations to Standards Development Organizations (SDOs) to accelerate the development of enhanced frameworks.

Additionally, the publication underscores the potential of utilizing Redfish® by DMTF (Distributed Management Task Force) along with open-source tools like Kepler (Kubernetes-based Efficient Power Level Exporter) and Prometheus. This combination enables MNOs to perform network-wide, real-time, and accurate estimations of IT-infrastructure performance and power consumption. These estimations are regarded as accurate enough to be effectively considered as ‘measurements’.

The publication emphasises that operating models will influence MNOs’ ability to manage the performance and energy consumption of vRAN functions. It suggests that APIs between Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) and MNOs may need to replace standardised FCAPS (Fault, Configuration, Accounting, Performance, and Security) interfaces if not exposed by the CSP.

“Bringing together the industry to tackle our shared challenges, unlocking opportunities and providing crucial guidance to the industry is NGMN’s core mission,” stated Anita Doehler, CEO at NGMN Alliance. “This publication further advances the industry’s capacity to deploy disaggregated, virtualized and cloud-native architectures, all while effectively managing energy consumption and environmental impact.”

The publication can be downloaded from here.

The collaboration between NGMN’s partners helps drive the most important subjects in the industry today, including NGMN’s Strategic Focus Topics: Mastering the Route to Disaggregation, Green Future Networks and 6G. NGMN invites all parties across the entire value chain to join the Alliance in this important endeavour.

Further information and all NGMN publications can be found on the website at ngmn.org.


About NGMN Alliance

The NGMN Alliance (NGMN) is a forum founded by world-leading Mobile Network Operators and open to all Partners in the mobile industry. Its goal is to ensure that next generation network infrastructure, service platforms and devices will meet the requirements of operators and ultimately will satisfy end user demand and expectations. The vision of NGMN is to provide impactful industry guidance to achieve innovative, sustainable and affordable mobile telecommunication services for the end user with a particular focus on Mastering the Route to Disaggregation / Operating Disaggregated Networks, Green Future Networks and 6G, whilst continuing to support 5G’s full implementation.

NGMN seeks to incorporate the views of all interested stakeholders in the telecommunications industry and is open to three categories of participants/NGMN Partners: Mobile Network Operators (Members), vendors, software companies and other industry players (Contributors), as well as research institutes (Advisors). NGMN invites all parties across the entire value chain to join the Alliance in these important endeavours.

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Green Future Networks: Metering in Virtualised RAN Infrastructure

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Being “green”, which entails energy efficiency and sustainability without compromising performance, is increasingly recognised as a hot topic and a prerequisite for enduring success today and in the future.

Through this publication, the NGMN Alliance delivers vital recommendations for industry standards, facilitating more precise and real-time estimations of energy consumed by virtualised or cloud-native network functions. It highlights the necessity of enhancing current 3GPP Virtual Network Function (VNF) / Cloud Network Function (CNF) energy consumption estimation frameworks for more precise measurement of energy consumption by VNF/CNF on shared IT/Cloud infrastructure.

Furthermore, the publication emphasises the implementation and the consideration by standardisation bodies of the Redfish® model published by DMTF as a starting point, and addresses the questions which data/parameters are measured, how, and which standards to align to.

Download

 

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FutureNet World 2024

London // by

NETWORK AUTOMATION & AI, DEFINING THE ROADMAP FOR THE TELCO OF THE FUTURE

We were excited to be part of the “FutureNet World” in London. Our CEO Anita Döhler discussed key insights from the latest NGMN Green Future Networks publication, highlighting how the industry can tackle the high priority issues concerning energy efficiency in networking and the steps that it needs to take to build towards net zero targets.

Access our latest Green Future Networks publications  here.

We invite interested industry players to become part of our endeavour. 

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NGMN enables MNOs to reduce their environmental impact and publishes new report

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Dusseldorf, Germany, 23 January 2024. Today the NGMN Alliance (NGMN) issued a new publication “Reducing Environmental Impact: Best Practices and Recommendations” providing guidance to the mobile telecommunication industry on how to manage and reduce its environmental footprint in relation to greenhouse gas emissions, materials usage, energy and water.

“Over the last three decades the mobile industry has provided enormous economic and societal benefits to billions of users worldwide. We must however continue this success story in a way that is sustainable and that minimises the industry’s environmental footprint”, said Arash Ashouriha, Chairman of the NGMN Alliance Board and SVP Group Technology at Deutsche Telekom. “I am proud that the mobile industry has come together – in NGMN – to share best practice and enable the whole industry to address this vitally important issue“, he added.

Laurent Leboucher, Member of the NGMN Alliance Board, Group CTO and SVP Orange Innovation Networks at Orange added: “Environmental impact is not just limited to carbon emissions – use of rare materials, plastics and water footprint all need to be considered, managed and reduced. Orange is proud to have collaborated with our industry peers to develop this NGMN publication – a publication which will provide significant value to the wider industry”.

This latest NGMN publication highlights how operators can assess the lifecycle environmental impact of their network infrastructure in terms of emissions, energy, and water footprint. The report identifies the use of Lifecycle Assessment in relation to energy and emissions and demonstrates how to calculate water footprint. Based on these tools, strategies are outlined for how to manage and reduce the environmental impact by, for example, selecting and using materials in the design of network infrastructure that have lower emissions and energy requirements and by for example switching to data centre cooling methods that use less water.

“The vision of the NGMN Alliance is to provide impactful guidance to achieve innovative and affordable mobile telecommunication services for the end user with a particular focus on Mastering the Route to Disaggregation, Green Future Networks, as well as 6G”, said Anita Doehler, CEO at NGMN Alliance. “The mobile industry is working very hard to reduce its environmental footprint. However, no single stakeholder – operator or vendor – can do this alone. We must work together, collaborate for the sake of developing new solutions, share best practices, and learn from each other to make this happen. This new publication is an excellent example of the value NGMN provides to its membership and to the wider industry”, she added.

The publication was developed with input from across the industry – with NGMN Partners representing operators, vendors, and research institutes.

The publication can be downloaded from here.

Collaboration is key to driving the industry’s most important topics such as NGMN’s strategic pillars: Operating Disaggregated Networks, Green Future Networks, and 6G. NGMN therefore invites all parties across the entire value chain to join the Alliance in this important endeavour.

Further information and all publications of the NGMN Alliance can be found on their website at ngmn.org

 

About NGMN Alliance

The NGMN Alliance (NGMN) is a forum founded by world-leading Mobile Network Operators and open to all Partners in the mobile industry. Its goal is to ensure that next generation network infrastructure, service platforms and devices will meet the requirements of operators and ultimately will satisfy end user demand and expectations. The vision of NGMN is to provide impactful industry guidance to achieve innovative, sustainable and affordable mobile telecommunication services for the end user with a particular focus on Mastering the Route to Disaggregation / Operating Disaggregated Networks, Green Future Networks and 6G, whilst continuing to support 5G’s full implementation.

NGMN seeks to incorporate the views of all interested stakeholders in the telecommunications industry and is open to three categories of participants/NGMN Partners: Mobile Network Operators (Members), vendors, software companies and other industry players (Contributors), as well as research institutes (Advisors). NGMN invites all parties across the entire value chain to join the Alliance in these important endeavours.

 

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Reducing Environmental Impact

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This NGMN publication highlights how operators can assess the lifecycle environmental impact of their network infrastructure  in terms of emissions, energy, and water footprint.

The report identifies the use of Lifecycle Assessment in relation to energy and emissions and demonstrates how to calculate Water Footprint. Based on these tools, strategies are outlined for how to manage and reduce the environmental impact by, for example, selecting and using materials in the design of network infrastructure that have lower emissions and energy requirements and by for example switching to data centre cooling methods that use less water.

The publication was developed with input from across the industry – with NGMN Partners representing operators, vendors, and research institutes.

Download
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NGMN issues Energy Saving Strategies and Best Practices for Mobile Network Operators (MNOs)

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Frankfurt, Germany, 05 December 2023. Today the NGMN Alliance (NGMN) issued the next publication concerning energy efficiency: “Effective Energy Saving Strategies and Best Practices for MNOs” providing the industry with further guidance on technical strategies to mitigate high energy costs.

“For the last 18 months high energy costs have put a renewed focus on technical strategies to reduce and better manage energy consumption as well as to ensure network resilience and stability”, said Arash Ashouriha, Chairman of the NGMN Alliance Board and SVP Group Technology at Deutsche Telekom. “This publication – which builds on our recent network energy efficiency roadmap (Green Future Networks: Network Energy Efficiency Phase 2) – provides MNOs with best practice energy saving and energy management techniques”, he stated.

Laurent Leboucher, Member of the NGMN Alliance Board, Group CTO and SVP Orange Innovation Networks at Orange, said “Saving energy is a must for all MNOs. Orange is proud to work in NGMN on this important topic which has immediate and ongoing relevance for the industry. We look forward to a forthcoming further publication on this topic due in Q1-2024 which will provide longer term guidance including on how Radio Access Network (RAN) sharing is a significant and cost-effective way of saving energy”.

“Sharing energy saving strategies and industry recommendations best illustrates NGMN’s efforts in adding immediate value to the industry whilst at the same time shaping the industry’s future direction through our core programmes”, emphasised Anita Döhler, CEO at NGMN Alliance.

This latest NGMN publication was developed with input from across the industry – with NGMN Partners representing operators, vendors, and research institutes. It provides a short guide to the best practices for operators to reduce and better manage their energy consumption whilst simultaneously maintaining desirable network Quality of Service (QoS) and handling a continuous increase of data traffic volume.  The report makes the following best practice recommendations:

  • Accelerate the transition from legacy networks (e.g., 2G and 3G) to more energy efficient technologies (e.g., 4G and 5G) whenever possible.
  • Deploy additional 5G/4G spectrum refarmed from 3G to increase network data throughput and capacity, and to keep up with the high data growth experienced during the past years.
  • Leverage the capabilities of the latest RAN technologies to achieve higher energy efficiency.
  • Implement Intelligent RAN energy saving features to save more energy in both 4G and 5G layers.
  • Update RAN sites with state-of-the-art energy efficient RAN equipment and antennas which facilitate all mobile generations, 2G to 5G.
  • Replace onsite air-conditioning units with energy efficient cooling.
  • Deploy renewable energy sources and battery storage units, which reduce the network dependency by electrical grids.
  • Use intelligent energy saving features together with battery storage equipment to further increase the network stability.

In addition, the report notes that the industry needs to work further to address several key areas including reducing base station ‘wake up times’ for extreme deep dormancy features and encouraging planning authorities to streamline and accelerate the approvals processes in relation to deploying renewable energy solutions at or near cell sites.

The publication can be downloaded here.

Collaboration is key to driving the industry’s most important challenges such as NGMN’s strategic pillars: Operating Disaggregated Networks, Green Future Networks, and 6G. NGMN therefore invites all parties across the entire value chain to join the Alliance in this important endeavour.

 

About NGMN Alliance

The NGMN Alliance (NGMN) is a forum founded by world-leading Mobile Network Operators and open to all Partners in the mobile industry. Its goal is to ensure that next generation network infrastructure, service platforms and devices will meet the requirements of operators and ultimately will satisfy end user demand and expectations. The vision of NGMN is to provide impactful industry guidance to achieve innovative, sustainable and affordable mobile telecommunication services for the end user with a particular focus on Mastering the Route to Disaggregation / Operating Disaggregated Networks, Green Future Networks and 6G, whilst continuing to support 5G’s full implementation.

NGMN seeks to incorporate the views of all interested stakeholders in the telecommunications industry and is open to three categories of participants/NGMN Partners: Mobile Network Operators (Members), vendors, software companies and other industry players (Contributors), as well as research institutes (Advisors). NGMN invites all parties across the entire value chain to join the Alliance in these important endeavours.

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Network Energy Efficiency Phase 3A

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In recent years, Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) have faced a more complex business environment. Tightening energy markets as well as spikes in natural gas prices have contributed to a challenging energy landscape. The significant increase in MNOs’ operational costs impacted efforts to deliver on transformational connectivity goals and meet investment targets.

This NGMN publication was developed with input from across the industry – with NGMN Partners representing operators, vendors, and research institutes – and provides the MNOs  with immediate and timely best practice energy saving and management techniques.

To mitigate high energy costs but also supporting the decrease of generated carbon footprint by lowering energy consumption, whilst simultaneously maintaining desirable network Quality of Service (QoS) and handling a continuous increase of data traffic volume.

 

6G Summit Abu Dhabi 2023

Abu Dhabi // by

We were excited to be part of the 6G Summit in Abu Dhabi, organized by the Technology Innovation Institute.

Our Programme Manager Chris Hogg spoke about “Green Future Networks: How NGMN enables sustainable networks and the road to 6G” and discussed together with other industry experts the “Sustainable Networking & Impact of 6G on Climate Change”.

Access our latest publication on Green Future Networks and 6G here.

We invite interested industry players to become part of our endeavor. 

Press and Industry Briefing on February 27, 2024

NGMN Press & Industry Briefing @MWC 2024

Mobile World Congress, Barcelona / Spain // by

NGMN Press & Industry Briefing 2024 

27 February 2024 – MWC24 in Barcelona, live on the Deutsche Telekom stage

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The annual NGMN Press & Industry Briefing at Mobile World Congress 2024 took centre stage at the Deutsche Telekom booth showcasing a stellar lineup of senior industry experts representing different geo-regions of the globe.

Arash Ashouriha – Chairman of the NGMN Alliance Board and SVP Group Technology at Deutsche Telekom – and Anita Döhler – CEO at NGMN Alliance – jointly reviewed last years’ achievements and provided an update on strategy and topics for 2024.

Accompanied by further NGMN Alliance Board Members they underscored the significant advantages derived from its unwavering commitment to provide impactful guidance in the areas Route to Disaggregation/Operating Disaggregated Networks, Green Future Networks, and 6G and delved deeper into NGMN’s significant publications: “6G Position Statement: An Operator View” and “Cloud Native Manifesto: An Operator View’”. Further they announced the IC&E 24 – NGMN’s global biennial Industry Conference & Exhibition.

The presentations was followed by an open Q&A session.

Board Members on stage in alphabetical order: Jérôme Birot/TELUS, Carlos Fernandes/DT, Yuhong Huang/China Mobile, Luke Ibbetson/Vodafone, Laurent Leboucher/Orange, Narothum Saxena/UScellular and Takki Yu/SK Telecom.

Please find further information and materials here.

 

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NGMN provides key recommendations and a roadmap for Mobile Network Energy Savings

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Frankfurt, Germany, 10 October 2023. Today the NGMN Alliance (NGMN) delivered the next publication: ”Green Future Networks: Network Energy Efficiency Phase 2” providing the industry with key
recommendations and a roadmap for reducing the energy consumption of mobile networks.

“Reducing the energy consumption of mobile networks is an important contributor to our journey to become net-zero and recently it has become a focus of the industry due to increased energy costs,” said Arash Ashouriha, Chairman of the NGMN Alliance Board and SVP Group Technology at Deutsche Telekom. “Since 2020 NGMN has contributed guidance on Green Future Networks. Our continuous efforts at NGMN are an important step in enabling operators and suppliers to identify practical and immediate ways to reduce network energy consumption,” he added.

“Our journey to become net-zero is of utmost importance and reducing the energy footprint of our networks is a crucial step in achieving this goal. By maximizing energy efficiency, utilizing renewable energy sources, and implementing energy management solutions, we can continue to deliver high-quality mobile services while meeting our sustainability targets,” stated Laurent Leboucher, Member of the NGMN Alliance Board, Group CTO and SVP Orange Innovation Networks at Orange.

This latest NGMN publication outlines and prioritises various options available to the industry to increase network energy efficiency. Energy saving approaches are organised into three broad categories and time-horizons: process optimisations – short-term; engineering optimisations – medium-term; and new technologies – long-term. Results highlight that it is possible – in the short-term – to reduce energy consumption by up to 10% by optimally configuring networks using existing power saving features. A table of recommended prioritised energy saving approaches is included in this publication. NGMN continues its work in this important area with further collaborative efforts focusing on energy management, metering and providing recommendations on the long-term energy roadmap for the industry.

“NGMN’s vision is to provide impactful and timely guidance to the industry”, said Anita Doehler, CEO at NGMN Alliance. “With the publication of Network Energy Efficiency Phase 2, we implement that vision. We provide prioritised energy saving recommendations addressing both; the immediate-term and the long-term roles that new processes, energy saving features and technologies will play in minimising the energy consumption of mobile networks,” she added

The publication can be downloaded here.


About NGMN

NGMN is a forum founded by world-leading Mobile Network Operators and open to all Partners in the mobile industry. Its goal is to ensure that next generation network infrastructure, service platforms and devices will meet the requirements of operators and ultimately will satisfy end user demand and expectations. The vision of NGMN is to provide impactful industry guidance to achieve innovative, sustainable and affordable mobile telecommunication services for the end user with a particular focus on Mastering the Route to Disaggregation / Operating Disaggregated Networks, Green Future Networks and 6G, whilst continuing to support 5G’s full implementation.

NGMN seeks to incorporate the views of all interested stakeholders in the telecommunications industry and is open to three categories of participants/NGMN Partners: Mobile Network Operators (Members), vendors, software companies and other industry players (Contributors), as well as research institutes (Advisors). NGMN invites all parties across the entire value chain to join the Alliance in these important endeavours.