Techsploder

Got an interesting release from Ovum’s Boston office about the energy-saving benefits of using GPON or gigabit passive optical networking to deliver broadband to customers, instead of DSL or Ethernet.

Why should we think about this? Because increased broadband speeds with DSL means more power has to be used. VDSL2 as rolled out by Vodafone and Orcon chews through more than twice as much power as the older ADSL, Ovum reckons. GPON is rather energy-efficient in comparison.

See table below for a comparison of power cost savings and reduced emissions for one million customers, using GPON.

Other interesting factoids in the release:

• In one European country, the incumbent service provider uses more than two terrawatt-hours (that’s 2,000,000 megawatt-hours of energy a year.
• A service provider with six million ADSL customers will use around 9,600kW at a cost of US$8 million a year.
• End of last year, some 250 million DSL customers required telco central offices or exchanges to deliver roughly 400MW of power.
• That figure doesn’t include airconditioning - for every 100W of equipment power usage, telcos have to use 60W on airconditioning, or a 60 per cent power premium.
• The 250 million DSL customers contribute over 771,100 kg of carbon dioxide every year, or the equivalent of buring 340,000,000 litres of petrol.

Comparison of GPON vs. other high-speed access technologies for power and emission

GPON vs. Power savings Power cost savings CO2 savings
ADSL2          ~11MWh               US$1.2M                  ~2.2M kg CO2  or 946,000l of petrol

VDSL2          ~29MWh               US$2.9M                  ~6.2M kg CO2  or 2,650,000l of petrol

E-FTTH        ~27MWh               US$2.7M                  ~5.8M kg CO2  or 2,480,000l of petrol

Source: “GPON: Reversing the Power-Bandwidth Trend,” Dan Parsons, IEEE Globecom 2007, Washington, D.C., November 28, 2007

July 31st, 2008 | Tags: ADSL, ADSL2+, DSL, energy saving, GPON, Internet, sustainability, VDSL2 | Category: Featured | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL