From self-driving cars, which communicate with one another; remote healthcare, which treats patients from the comfort of their homes; to an immersive virtual and augmented reality, which lets users experience learning and gaming in an entirely new way, 5G comes with a promise to create a never-before-seen world for people and businesses.
Today, from both cost and carbon footprint perspectives, energy is one of the telecommunication industry’s biggest challenges. Ericsson estimates the annual global energy cost for running mobile networks to be about $25-billion. If 5G is deployed in the same way as its previous generations to meet increasing traffic demands, then energy consumption in mobile networks will increase dramatically. This is unsustainable in terms of cost as well as environmental impact.
So, can we rollout 5G while reducing energy consumption? The answer is yes. Today, it is truly possible to lower total mobile network energy consumption while meeting the massive traffic growth challenge.