Nipping Internet’s Carbon Footprint in the Bud

It’s a little known fact, but nevertheless one that will weigh in on the world we’re building for tomorrow: it is expected that the Internet’s carbon footprint will be twice that of air travel by 2020.

The incredible growth in Internet traffic we’re currently witnessing is driven mostly by video. When everybody is streaming, we’re bound to feel the heat. IP video is expected to amount to 80%-90% of total IP traffic in only two years from now.

Based on this observation and considering that electricity bills are also expected to increase in the near future, a joint effort has seen the day to tackle this environmental and economic problem before it gets out of hand. This joint effort is CONVINcE which stands for Consumption OptimizatioN in VIdeo Networks.

CONVINcE is a research project to address this challenge of reducing power consumption in IP-based video networks with an end-to-end approach: from the head-end where contents are encoded and streamed to the terminals where contents are delivered to subscribers. CONVINcE also focuses in assessing core and access network power consumption.

EXFO is proud to be one of the partners in the CONVINcE project. EXFO will be involved in activities relating to the evaluation of access network power consumption. The assessment of power consumption will be done for 3G/4G network elements when video is streamed over a mobile terminal.

With initiatives like CONVINcE, the telecom industry looks to drive technological innovation that help make a greener, better tomorrow for all.