TALKING
‘‘ business
We ’ re now living in a world in which cloud computing and online communications have never been more important .
The tech and telco industries are the foundation for every critical sector in Australia – from agriculture to manufacturing to finance and more . Essentially , networking underpins every part of our lives , so the stakes are high if we don ’ t work together toward environmental efficiencies .
Aside from disappointing a public who want their suppliers to increasingly decarbonize , carbon border taxes have the tech and telco sectors and the industries they serve facing competitive financial pressures on a global scale . We can ’ t afford to fall behind here ; we need to change with the world , not local policy .
An example is coherent technology innovation . Without getting too technical , coherent optical transmission makes possible the transport of considerably more information through a fiber-optic cable .
This is critical , as the proliferation of data is growing at an unprecedented rate . Dell ’ Oro Group reports that bandwidth capacity in the network grew an incredible 70x over the last 10 years . During this time , the industry achieved an 80x increase in data throughput over a single wavelength in the same or smaller footprint while slashing power-per-bit consumption by 90 % for optical transmission .
Additionally , coherent technology has allowed network providers to repurpose existing fiber plant to carry more capacity and delay the need to lay out new fiber . These advancements have led to the significant reduction in footprint and power required , resulting in a tangible impact on global emissions .
And looking ahead , 400ZR plugs are set to be installed by large data center providers within the next year to allow them to interconnect across great distances .
For the telco sector , this change can be as simple as finding efficiencies in our networks – doing more with less .
As we install the plugs , we have a chance to make them energy efficient . 400ZR plugs consume around 17 watts each , but what if we could shave off 2 watts from each plug ?
This is feasible , today . While 2 watts might not seem like much , for a network comprised of 20 data centers , each hosting 20,000 15-watt 400ZR plugs , the power savings would be about > 1MW per year . This equates to around 11,485 barrels of oil consumption , 597 homes ’ worth of energy use , or 603,442,084 smartphones charged .
We are making great progress as an industry with the introduction of new network technologies which , when considered together , are driving huge reductions in power consumption per transported bit of data ; however , there are still further actions we can take to maintain competitiveness , while also enabling incremental savings in our energy consumption .
It ’ s worth all providers taking a microscope to their networks now to find powered hardware that is ripe for efficiency gains , because investing our resources to drive innovation for new efficiencies and greener networks must be a priority .
The only thing in our power is , well , power . How well we use it will be critical to both the telecom sector ’ s – and Australia ’ s-sustainability and success within the global economy . p
38 INTELLIGENTCIO APAC www . intelligentcio . com