4G Goes Green

India currently has approximately 3,37,000 towers and is expected to have
4,63,000 towers in the next three years. Given the power outages in India, each
tower currently consumes on an average almost 4,000 liters of diesel every year.
This means the telecom industry is expected to consume 1.8 bn liters of diesel
every year.

Keeping this in mind, the Indian government is now contemplating asking
telcos to install solar panels to generate backup power for telecom towers, and
a proposal for the same is being finalized by the Ministry of New and Renewable
Energy (MNRE) to contain the use of polluting diesel gensets to provide backup
power.

4G Green BTS

After Motorola's successful trial of a remote GSM base station using
alternative power systems in 2006, and Pakistan's Warid telecom's Macro BTS
multi-sector high performance WiMax solution introduced in May last year, Huawei
is the next in line with a new 4G green BTS solution for successful and seamless
transition from 3G to 4G and other NGN technology.

For rural areas, Huawei offers a single radio BTS that consumes just 120
watts, and requires fewer solar panels or diesel, besides also coming with an
installed intelligence system which shuts off certain sectors in the BTS during
the lean period when traffic is low, leading to further decrease in power
consumption. This can contribute to an almost 40% reduction in opex y-o-y for
operators as well as effective TCO lowering. 4G green BTS is an extension of the
same technology with 4G-ready (LTE) cards for extension of services on the same
BTS on a single RAN. The bare unit of WiMax can also be used on single RAN and
as part of the single cabinet solution.

Other Energy Efficient Measures

With the rapid growth of IP based base stations for 3G and 4G mobile
networks, it has been found that the key problem for operators is the transfer
of time and clock synchronization data between IP based base stations and IP
based networks. Thus, ZTE introduced a new FTTX solution-a time and clock
remedy, which also provides DiffServ QoS guarantee through security controls
like flexible VLAN QinQ support and port location information. This can help
operators build future oriented green broadband networks with the lowest TCO.

VNL's also introduced its WorldGSM which is a zero opex solar powered GSM
system specifically designed to enable operators to build commercial networks in
remote rural areas.

RF product maker and foundry services provider, TriQuint Semiconductor has
also released the first products of its high power 3G/4G wireless base station
RFICs. As a result of this high efficiency, operators can place larger
amplifiers onto existing cell site towers without a corresponding increase in
the size or weight. Higher power amplifiers, in turn, deliver higher data rates
to all users in the cell.

To Be Green or Not to be

According to research, operators find the task of powering BTS sites in
developed and emerging markets challenging primarily due to the high costs
involved in such deployment, or due to difficulty of provisioning mains
electrical power. With the sky high 3G spectrum rates and the government's plan
to increase prices of extra 2G spectrum, this additional cost would not help
operators in any way to earn faster RoI, as it will only double the cost of
installing towers.

However, what is not forseen is that opex would come down substantially as
diesel based electricity is expensive, costing as much as Rs 15 per unit. This
is especially a huge saving in developing nations and rural areas where
operators may have to spend as much as two-thirds of their operating costs on
diesel power, and constant power fluctuations are very common.

Beryl M

berylm@cybermedia.co.in