The utopia of universal connectivity, with more security and coverage and lower latency, has arrived in the form of 5G technology, which also champions the fight to preserve the environment. This transformation of telecommunications involves not only a change in the sector, but also in society itself and its way of communicating. At this time, Spain is progressing towards the digital connectivity objectives set by the European Union, to “guarantee ultra-fast broadband coverage (100 Mbps) throughout the territory in 2025 and Gigabit and 5G connectivity for the entire population in 2030.” . In the Spanish case, the coverage of 5G networks reaches 82.36% of the population, according to the Broadband Coverage Report in Spain (2022), slightly behind Germany and Italy, but above the European average.
Our experts have estimated that 5G, compared to 4G, will be able to divide by ten, in the year 2025, the consumption necessary to transmit one gigabyte. And in 2030 it will be able to divide it by twenty
Mónica Sala, general director of the Orange Spain Network
Sustainability and 5G IoT
To achieve this, it has been necessary to combine efforts between the public, private, technological, institutional and academic sectors, which allow the combination of digital innovation and 5G to promote the next technological eco-revolution. “5G has been born green: In its founding criteria it had to be a technology that was very energy efficient,” says Mónica Sala, general director of the Orange Spain Network. “At Orange, our experts have estimated that 5G, compared to 4G, will be able to divide by ten, in the year 2025, the consumption necessary to transmit one gigabyte. And in 2030 it will be able to divide it by twenty.”
In fact, compared to its predecessors, 5G can be 90% efficient in terms of energy consumption and emissions reduction. An exponential leap in sustainability, which will advance as the old 2G and 3G networks are turned off and 4G traffic is migrated.
“5G stands out for its spectral efficiency, that is, in bits per hertz (bps/hz) compared to its predecessors, with one abysmal difference: much less energy is needed to transmit the same amount of information,” explains Cristóbal Escoda, founding partner and co-CEO of the consulting firm Nae. “On the other hand, the electronics, as designed, are much more efficient, with a 20% reduction compared to 4G. The architecture as conceived is distributed: at the level of the coreof the network, there are no large centers of energy consumption, but it is distributed in equipment throughout its architecture. In addition, functionalities designed for 5G, such as selective shutdown, not using resources when not necessary, contribute to this energy efficiency.”
5G technology is characterized by its low latency, longer battery life of the terminals (which improves their energy efficiency), greater connection capacity (more than one million connections per square kilometer) and greater security. And the technological innovations of the future will follow this path, as pointed out by Josep Paradells, professor at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) and director of the i2CAT Foundation: “From an energy point of view, how are research centers collaborating? On the one hand, as basic research, we try to influence the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project), in low consumption aspects, such as technology wake up radio,so that a telephone terminal uses less energy waiting for a call to arrive,” he explains. “On the other hand, Orange asked us a long time ago to make a terminal that worked without a battery, totally robust, with a solar panel that worked indoors and capable of transmitting when it has power. “This provided Orange with the knowledge to develop terminals that were applicable to the IoT (Internet of Things), sustainable and maintenance-free.”
The electronics, as designed, are much more efficient, with a 20% reduction compared to 4G. The architecture, as conceived, is distributed: at the level of the coreof the network, there are no large centers of energy consumption, but it is distributed in equipment throughout its architecture
Cristóbal Escoda, founding partner and co-CEO of the consulting firm Nae
Between 2015 and 2021, Orange has reduced consumption per gigabyte in its telephone network by up to 95%. A milestone in energy efficiency that has been achieved thanks to the combination of several actions. On the one hand, the promotion of network sharing, both fixed and mobile, which allows all operators involved to be more efficient. Another important aspect in this reduction in consumption is the cooling systems, which account for more than 30% of the electricity consumption bill. “Orange was a pioneer in using the cooling system free-cooling [en los sistemas de climatización de las estaciones base de la red de telefonía móvil]as innovative as using outside air to cool inside air, which has allowed us significant savings in electrical consumption,” explains Sala.
The deployment of 5G itself – which the more it is implemented, the more efficiency it achieves – has also been key, as well as the commissioning of equipment: the removal of obsolete equipment that has high energy consumption. Finally, close collaboration with manufacturers, such as Ericsson, to take advantage of maximum functionalities and try to reduce consumption, combined with the use of an artificial intelligence algorithm that offers an increase in additional savings, has allowed this 95% reduction. in its environmental impact.
Industry, countryside and sustainable ‘smart cities’
A recent study by the firm Ericsson highlights that the deployment of 5G technology in four high-emission sectors [energía, transporte, manufactura y construcción] It would generate savings of between 55 and 170 million tons of CO₂ emissions per year, the equivalent of removing one in seven cars from the roads of the European Union: more than 35 million, in total.
“These four industries, which are very intensive in energy consumption, are a great opportunity, because by acting as leverage on them we can reduce carbon gas emissions into the atmosphere by 15%, as if we simultaneously removed Spain and Italy in what European emissions are concerned,” says Andrés Vicente, president and CEO of Ericsson Iberia.
To achieve this, the key is in the combination of technologies such as cloud,artificial intelligence, IoT with 5G. “This will intervene in many of the environments where these sectors operate, such as green energy generation, which is done in remote environments, or transportation, where we can have autonomous vehicles, or environmental protection, where drones can be used to permanently monitor spaces. forestry. All this is impossible without rural infrastructure and the deployment of 5G,” adds Vicente.
Cities will be able to be smarter and use resources on demand, make use of telecommunications more efficiently, such as organizing transportation (which can take advantage of 5G and its low latency and high capacity to simultaneously connect different things) or better management. of the most efficient public lighting.
Cities will be able to be smarter and use resources on demand, make use of telecommunications more efficiently, such as organizing transportation (which will allow taking advantage of 5G and its low latency and high capacity to simultaneously connect different things) or managing the more efficient public lighting. But what happens with rural environments and emptied Spain? One of the challenges of 5G technology is precisely to guarantee that it is inclusive, to offer in rural environments or municipalities with a smaller population, the same opportunities that this technology allows in urban environments. “Aid has been focused on this focus to deploy 5G networks in municipalities with less than 5,000 and 10,000 inhabitants. The objective is to take advantage not only of the sustainability of 5G, but also of sustainability to achieve inclusive development, universal deployment throughout the territory, which allows us to avoid a digital divide that has taken us decades to eliminate and, at the same time, establish population. and economic activity in these environments,” concludes Matías González, Secretary General of Telecommunications and Regulation of Audiovisual Communication Services.
