Chunghwa Telecom, the largest telecom company in Taiwan, increased its energy efficiency in a recent 5G mid-band upgrade. The Ericsson Massive MIMO from AIR 6488 to AIR 6419 and from AIR 3239 to AIR 3219, cuts power use by a third.
The MNO upgraded 2,000 installed base stations, along with at least 150 centralized RAN sites to bolster its 5G commercial rollout but also lower both operating costs and energy usage. Energy efficiency and sustainability have become critical topics in the industry and with the Taiwanese government, according to Alex Chien, President of Network Technology, Chunghwa Telecom.
“Sustainability has always been at the heart of our business,” Chien said. “We believe network modernization is a key enabler for a greener digital infrastructure as the foundation for the societal Net Zero target. Our partnership with Ericsson will accelerate our transformation to a low-carbon future.”
In addition, Chunghwa deployed Ericsson’s Fronthaul 6000 to connect its radios and the RAN Compute in the C-RAN hub. By using the passive parts of the Fronthaul 6000 portfolio, energy consumption could also be minimized. The Router 6000 is also being used to aggregate and connect RAN Compute units to the backhaul network, which also reduces the overall operating costs.
Nokia reports that 70-80 percent of a mobile network’s energy is consumed by base station sites, and mobile network operators see an overall increase of 10-30 percent annually in mobile network energy use. Machine learning allows the Nokia Intelligent RAN to reduce radio network energy consumption by 15 percent and improve overall efficiency, according to the manufacturer.
“AI-based energy management automation has proven itself to be the fast track to shrinking the carbon footprint of telco networks,” Nokia said. “It can reduce energy costs and carbon footprint by 30 percent with no negative impact on performance or end customer experience.”
By J. Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers Technology Editor
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