绿色“无线通信”

苏公雨

Improving the environment is always a good idea, but wireless companies are
finding ways to go green while bringing more “green” to their bottom lines.

Maybeit’s pressure from organizations such as Greenpeace. Maybe it’s justpart of the larger trend of businesses going green, triggered in nosmall part by Nobel-prize winning Al Gore and “An Inconvenient Truth.”Perhaps by adopting environmentally friendly practices, companies findthemselves saving money.

Nokia’s Remade uses                         no new materials.

Whateverthe trigger, you’re hearing more and more wireless companies talk abouttheir efforts toward a greener environment. It was a theme duringkeynotes at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) this year, where topexecutives from companies like China Mobile and Nokia noted theirprogress, and the topic is likely to come up at the CTIA Wireless 2008convention in Las Vegas.
Alcatel-Lucent mentions its focus onclimate change in a press release about its expanding W-CDMA/HSPAportfolio. Ericsson prominently displays a white paper aboutsustainable energy on its Website. In sum: “People now feel it’ssomething they have to address,” says Peter Jarich, Current Analysisanalyst.
RECYCLE, RE-USE
For years, the wirelessindustry has hammered on the point about recycling cell phones. Mostcarriers sponsor programs to collect phones, and they often urgeconsumers to get those phones out of desk drawers and into recycling orrefurbishing centers. Via its Website, Nokia offers postage-paid returnlabels for people who want to mail in phones for recycling, regardlessof the manufacturer. To date, the non-profit organization RechargeableBattery Recycling Corporation (RBRC) has collected and recycled morethan 42 million pounds of rechargeable batteries, according to LindaGabor, director of marketing and media relations at RBRC.

Nokia’s 3110 sports covers made from                         more than 50% renewable materials.

Butenvironmental groups are stepping up pressure to do more. At CeBIT inMarch, Greenpeace highlighted its “Searching for Greener Electronics”survey. Fourteen major electronics brands agreed to provide informationfor the survey, which covered not only mobile phones but desktops,notebooks and PDAs. Thirty-seven products were awarded points againstgreen design criteria, including the substitution of hazardous chemicalsubstances, energy efficiency and recyclability. The Sony EricssonT650i was singled out as the leader in mobile phones, performing wellon the energy efficiency of its charger and being free of PVC and otherchemicals. Also making the top five were the Nokia N95, LG ElectronicsKE970, Motorola KRZR and the Samsung SGH-G600.
Since Greenpeacestarted analyzing the mobile industry in 2005 – mainly in the handsetarena as opposed to network infrastructure – it has seen improvementsin policies and greener products coming to market, says Zeina Alhajj,campaign coordinator at Greenpeace. But in the mobile industry, productconsumption is extremely high, as the industry well knows. All thatgrowth and shorter handset replacement cycles lead to more waste, andit’s ending up in places like China, India and Africa, she says. Somechemicals used in handsets are banned in Europe and because mosteveryone wants to sell product in Europe, handset makers are cuttingout those chemicals on a global basis. But in other areas, they fallshort. For example, why aren’t chargers standardized so that they canwork with any mobile phone model? “It’s just a bloody charger,” shesays.
CANS, BOTTLES, TIRES…
Still, it’s not as if theindustry is standing still. Nokia is one of those companies that talksabout how it was going green before it was cool. “It’s really just thecompany culture,” says spokesman Keith Nowak. One relatively easy thingthe Finnish company started doing was reducing the packaging around itsphones. With phones getting smaller, the need for so much packagingdiminishes, and just making the boxes smaller makes a big impact, hesays. And it saves on packaging and shipping costs – it costs a lot toship air, which is a standard component in so many consumer productpackages. Nowak estimates Nokia now uses about half the packaging itpreviously used.
The Remade concept phone, which, as NokiaPresident and CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo noted during his MWC keynote,cannot yet make a phone call. But it is the result of what Nokiadesigners could do when tasked to make a device that uses no newmaterials. They ended up using metals from old aluminum cans, plasticsfrom drink bottles and old car tires. Another device, the 3110 Evolve,is an actual device that sports bio-covers made from more than 50%renewable material. The plan is to expand that product line asdesigners learn more about various materials.
Efforts also arefocused on chargers, which draw power even when they’re not being used.Nokia says it was the first manufacturer to put alerts on its devicesto encourage people to unplug their chargers. The power that could besaved globally by all Nokia phone users unplugging their chargers whenno longer needed is equivalent to enough energy to power 100,000average-size European homes, the company says.
INFRASTRUCTURE, TOO
Ofcourse, going green means addressing the network infrastructure aswell. In a white paper published last August, Ericsson said assessmentof its own products shows that in GSM and W-CDMA mobile networks, it’sthe radio access network, particularly radio base stations, that arethe highest contributors of CO2 emissions. The company concludes thatit makes sense that any serious attempt to make mobile communicationsmore energy-efficient should focus on the performance of the radionetwork while continuing to improve in other areas, such as the corenetwork.

Installations of Nokia Siemen’s                         FlexiPole (left) and FlexiWall

AtNokia Siemens Networks (NSN), executives consider their greeninitiatives as strategic selling points for grabbing more market sharein North America. When the two companies formed their JV, which waslaunched one year ago, it was a perfect time to scrutinize theirbusinesses and set their priorities, explains Susan Schramm, head ofmarketing. Both companies had long-standing commitments inenvironmental concerns, and coming together, they anticipated wirelesstraffic growth and its impact on the environment. “We knew that if wewere over time going to have a product portfolio to keep up withgrowth, it had to address this issue,” she says.
One aspect ofthat portfolio is the Flexi Base Station; the power consumption of theW-CDMA Flexi Base Station is as low as 540W, representing a reductionof up to 60% compared with conventional systems. Last year, NSN boastedthe Flexi GSM Base Station as the smallest and most energy-efficient onthe market; it looks about a fraction of the size of a conventionalbase station. The company says one of its missions is to minimize thenumber of base station sites required.

Schramm: Green is more than                         a marketing plan; it is a                         business decision.

Butwait a minute – isn’t NSN in the business of selling base stations?Schramm acknowledges the irony. But using smaller, more efficient basestations means the units can get installed in hard-to-reach places thatotherwise might not get coverage. It’s not just developing regions ofthe world, either; in North America, new entrants that don’t have thereal estate of their predecessors are looking for ways to set up siteswithout the acquisition costs of yesteryear, she says. In NorthAmerica, network operators like TerreStar and Stelera Wireless aredeploying NSN solutions.
Schramm adds that the commitment appliesequally to the wireline side, including for backhaul, where things likepower reduction requirements and reducing truck rolls also come intoplay. She notes that as a large global company, NSN, like a lot ofwireless companies, is in a position to effect change on a granderscale and possibly faster than others.
Sharing solutions betweencountries is one way; advocating things such as video conferencing isanother. Schramm notes a figure she’s heard: Research shows the carbonfootprint of a 1-hour phone call is 1,000 times smaller than theenvironmental load of a 2,000-mile flight to meet someone in person.
HERE & ABROAD
Motorolais doing its part as well. The company is a Phase II member ofChicago’s Climate Change (CCX), a North American voluntary but legallybinding greenhouse gas emissions reduction, registry and tradingsystem. Motorola has committed to tracking and reporting greenhouse gasemissions and to achieving a 6% reduction in emissions by 2010 below ayear-2000 baseline, according to Maya Komadina, external communicationscoordinator at Motorola.
Whatabout using wind to power base stations? That’s what Motorola did lastyear in a pact with the GSM Association. Motorola deployed a wind andsolar power system to operate MTC Namibia’s GSM cell site at Dordabisvillage in the Khomas region of Namibia, Africa. Motorola’s solutionhas the capability to be applied to other wireless networks as well,whether they be CDMA or WiMAX. The wind and solar cell sites meanthere’s no need for monthly visits for refueling.
Motorola alsosays it is actively working with alternative powering technologies,including fuel cells that are hydrogen and methanol-based, as well assolar cells, to identify potential applications for increased powercapacity in future handsets.
The company already has created a2-way radio emergency application powered by a fuel cell; demonstratedwith Angstrom technology a Motorola mobile device with an integratedfuel cell; and completed trials of specialized cell sites powered by anintegrated solar cell.
In the end, companies aren’t likely to gogreen out of the goodness of their hearts. They need to make money orsave money. When you change the context around how a decision is made,that’s a tipping point, says NSN’s Schramm. It comes down tosustainable business logic. “This isn’t just a marketing plan. It hasto make business sense,” she says. And she’s eager to see how NSN andthe industry as a whole fares. “I’m looking forward to what the nextyears will bring.”
Hopefully, more green for everybody.