Green Telecom, Part VII: Verizon's greener network

Verizon’s new standards for energy consumption, announced last June, are already showing the promise of success. As a result, Verizon, which told vendors to reduce power consumption of their products by 20%, may push for more from its vendors, according to Chuck Graff, director of corporate network and technology at Verizon.

“Our vendors tell us they are on track to meet the date [January 2009], and several vendors said they can meet that today,” Graff said. “They are challenging me to raise the number. We know we have some equipment that meets it and some that is close. They are all working towards it, and many of them have said it’s not as onerous as they thought.”

At its 14^th Annual Network Equipment Building System (NEBS) forum in Orlando, Fla., Verizon honed in on ways the telecom industry in general can be doing more to reduce its own energy consumption and carbon-dioxide emissions -- and help its customers do so as well.

Verizon’s FiOS deployment has enabled the company to reduce truck rolls associated with maintenance of copper phone lines. “Overall, we’ve seen a 39% savings in maintenance,” Graff said.

Reducing power consumption is a major theme, and much of that revolves around reducing the heating and cooling cycles of network gear, Graff said. The power plant and cooling requirements represent 52% of a central office energy bill, versus 48% consumed by the equipment itself. But any reduction in the energy required to power a piece of telecom equipment has a cascading effect, reducing energy spent on distribution, DC power systems and conversions, and cooling. “For every one watt of power consumption we reduce, it’s over 2.41 watts of savings,” Graff said.