Green Telecom Part VI: Verizon a telecom leader

“Sometimes the ad hoc structure evolves into something that is more sustainable, but we don’t see that everywhere yet,” Kimm said. “That could change after the election, since whether McCain or Obama gets elected, there is the real possibility of mandates.”

Because enterprises today are extended, with lots of business partners and suppliers as well as mobile workers, the solution to enabling communication while reducing travel and improving efficiency is a complex one, which includes issues such as security and new technologies such as high-definition video conferencing.

“There is an explosion of new very high-quality video and audio from companies such as Cisco, Tandberg, Polycom, and we have put in a handful of systems internally,” Kimm said. “What’s been surprising are the utilization stats. We’ve had almost 50% utilization with very little in farming effort to drive people to behave. We think it’s because the video part got to the ‘good enough’ threshold.”

Verizon is able to manage those high-end conferencing services for its customers and also use IP technology to enable trends such as “hoteling”: building office space that can accommodate a different set of workers, depending on the day and time.

“Office space — heating, cooling and lighting buildings — is the single biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in the U.S.,” Kimm said. “If you can get to a cap and trade system [using emission credits], we can optimize the way we build office space. This doesn’t happen overnight. Real estate tends to be a lagger because of long-term leases, construction times, etc., but we are already seeing it in the way big companies are constructing office space to do things like hoteling. IP telephony enables that because it lets me make the phone on my desk be my number. And with modern LAN and 802.1 technology, it’s easy to be flexible, easy to find a printer and easy to be secure.”

Another key element is providing centrally located, secure storage for corporate data that can be accessed remotely, also on a secure basis.