https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/which-energy-efficiency-telecom-networks-alexandre-pieyre/
While the telecom sector’s overall electricity consumption is mainly due to data centers and telecom devices (production and consumption during their operational lives), telecom networks themselves still represent about 16%[1] the sector’s consumption, which equates to 1%[2] of global electricity use. Though a small percentage, it still represented 250 TWh globally in 2019 (equivalent to the yearly consumption of a country like Spain[3]).
But not all types of networks are the same. While publicly available studies and data are still too few, key lessons can already be learned:
- Fixed networks consume much less energy than mobile networks (c.3 to 10 times less on average[4]). In other words, mobile networks represent 70% of telecommunications companies’ energy consumption[5], while carrying a minority portion (est. 10%[6]) of the data;
- Fixed networks energy consumption does not vary a lot with data usage, as opposed to mobile networks[7] and are therefore unlikely to consume more energy in the future because of the booming data demand;
- New fixed networks are much more efficient than older ones: fiber is estimated to consume much less energy than the historical copper networks (though estimates vary widely: 3 times less to 17 times less[8]);