STOCKHOLM – Swedish telecommunications supplier Ericsson will use energy-efficient products and technology to grow mobile telephony in areas of the world that have never before had access to communication services.
Forecasting a potential 6.5 billion mobile phone subscriptions in the world by 2013, Ericsson says about 90% of this growth could come from “developing markets” where more than half of the population lives outside city limits. As electrical power grids in these areas are either unreliable or non existent, the company could utilize alternate technology such as wind power, solar power and biofuel.
Ericsson said in the press release that the next step after building the infrastructure, would be to ensure cost-efficient day-to-day operations through “network energy optimization”. This will allow telecom operators to develop and deliver affordable and sustainable communications services to these new markets in a way that makes business profitable for the operators.
"One example of what we have done to be able to offer mobile telephony to the billions of people living outside city limits, is the introduction of a unique hybrid solution where we use submarine batteries that can be recharged over and over again to power a mobile network," said Ulf Ewaldsson, vice-president and head of product area radio at Ericsson.
"This solution saves approximately 10,000 liters of diesel per radio site per year, which is 40 to 50% of the diesel needed. This adds up to large quantities of fuel that can be saved in a mobile network with hundreds or thousands of diesel powered radio sites."
