Global collaboration for a better future and a cleaner planet

We live in a challenging world particularly since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Our ways of living, communicating, interacting, purchasing, and working have changed. With every challenge comes great opportunity so I remain extremely optimistic about the outcomes of this crisis. During confinement, we got to know our neighbors better and offered assistance. We saw some great collaboration amongst colleagues. We have seen startups work on very innovative projects to help fight the virus and finally some large companies changed their production lines to help manufacture masks, hydroalcoholic gel and all types of protection for caregivers and healthcare professionals. Thanks to today’s technology, we were able to carry on working and communicating with friends, family, and colleagues.

Digital transformation has started and has become higher on every company’s priority list. However, this is just the beginning. We cannot stop here. We need to ensure we do not go back to where the world was before Covid-19 disrupted our lives. Our efforts need to be sustainable and ensure a better future for us, our children, and all generations to come. To achieve this, everyone needs to work together, from government to startups to large corporations.

In France, we have seen with our latest local elections that environmental issues are becoming extremely high on everyone’s list. Many major cities now have mayors that are focusing on green energy and environmentally beneficial programs.

However, we are not all equal faced with this transformation. Over half of the world’s population still does not have internet access nor access to other digital technologies (Source from Internal Telecommunication Union).

I attended last week the Huawei Better World Summit where a white paper called “Green 5G: Building a Sustainable World” was published about 5G's role in increasing the energy efficiency of mobile broadband networks. Since Covid-19 and confinement, digital connections between humans and objects have increased tremendously. It is especially important to understand how 5G will ensure an optimization of energy efficiency and reduce carbon dioxide emissions in this ever-increasing digital world.

Companies need to stick to environmental sustainability as a core strategy for business development, to continuous ICT innovations that help reduce carbon emissions for telecom products and all related industries. This is a global challenge and every company; every country needs to share responsibility for its success. The potential threat could be very damaging for our planet if this is not done properly with respect and professionalism. With new technologies such as 5G, Al, and Cloud, climate issues will be managed better if all technologies become greener and respect environmental regulations.

When the environmental angle is taken into consideration during the planning phase of new technology, resources are then used smartly and reduced energy consumption is a major factor (in offices, mobility, travel, supply chain…). I hear very often that with 5G there will be more data and more servers thus creating more waste of resources. This is not true. 5G has been developed to support increasing data usage with sustainability in mind. Connections will increase as there will be more bandwidth, less latency and easier, faster access to networks while optimizing energy use.

The 5G technology provides some inherent energy improvements compared to previous generations of mobile technology.  For example, when base stations are idle, AI fueled algorithms will turn them off. Also, resources on demand would be allocated as needed rather than continually. This avoids using unnecessary energy. Also, to maximize and optimize resources, a multi-layered approach has been created. “This includes enhanced power management at equipment level; new siting solutions such as liquid cooling, to reduce the need for air conditioning; and flexible use of resources such as spectrum. Together, these strategies combine to provide a brand-new way to deploy and run mobile networks, which can achieve per-bit energy efficiency up to 50 times higher than with 4G. (Source Analysys Mason and Huawei – https://tinyurl.com/y2qmm6ke) “ .

Each country has political reasons to adopt a technology or a company. My main point is to ensure we look at the overall picture which is to preserve our environment and leave our planet to the next generation in better condition. The balance between evolution and energy protection is the key to our future development.

We are not only talking about industry and 5G. Every action we take needs to have natural resources management in mind. We live in a world where technology has a particularly important role to play in helping industries and citizens to save our resources. Let us be clever and combine all technologies to ensure they work together and optimize their needs for energy and other resources.

As a conclusion, governments, operators, and industries need to act in collaboration now. Our world needs to see more collaborative actions to save our resources and ultimately save our planet. This will take a significant amount of time and resources to arrive at a point where we all believe our planet is safe and sound. However, it is important that we all do our share in making the world a better place thanks to technology through better collaboration.