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Communications group reports efficiency spin-offs from sustainability thrust

22nd May 2015

By: Schalk Burger

Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

  

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Communications technology firm Ericsson sub-Saharan Africa head Fredrik Jejdling says the company’s commitment to sustainability and corporate responsibility has been integrated into all facets of its operations, which has provided it with sustainable revenue generation and market prospects.

This companywide focus on sustainability and responsibility, including environmental responsibility, has also resulted in its supplier-base, logistics and technological developments for long-term sustainability.

“Our developments have also improved the efficiency of our equipment in the field. Specifically, our focus on the sustainability of our network equipment has led to a reduction in the energy consumed by nodes within a network, as well as a reduction of the total number of nodes within the network,” he says.

Similarly, the Ericsson Radio system, launched in March, aims to improve the efficiency of radio equipment for mobile network cellular towers, which is especially important in Africa because it is dominated by cellular connectivity but faces significant energy constraints.

Jejdling says the parameters used to design the system were twofold – energy efficiency of the components and equipment, and flexible high-performance owing to the smaller size and weights of the entire system. These parameters are very important in emerging and developing economies, including sub-Saharan Africa.

Further, many cellular base stations in Africa operate independently from the grid, and lower energy intensity would translate into direct fuel savings and the possibility of deploying alternative energy systems, as well as reduced logistics costs to operate the base stations, he adds.

Consolidation of technologies and various technology standards and protocols was also central to extracting improved efficiencies from information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure, Jejdling notes.

He notes that Ericsson has developed multistandard radio systems for cellular base stations and that, as multimodal base stations support multiple technology standards, such as long-term evolution and high-speed packet access simultaneously, they have less hardware and the overall energy consumption is also reduced.

“Our design of network architectures has enabled the virtualisation of various functions of network elements, which has also resulted in fewer nodes. “This helped to improve the functionality of the networks, which can largely be programmed and supported remotely.” Jejdling adds that lower energy consumption by these networks reduce energy costs, particularly diesel fuel costs.

He says sustainability must be part of the governing principles of and be integrated into the way a business conducts its operations: “Sustainability becomes an important part of the decision-making process and, within this framework, we continuously encourage all our employees, divisions, customers and partners to participate in the drive for sustainability.”

“While we work with our partners to help them achieve and implement sustainable practices, any measures taken must make business sense for them to be truly sustainable.”

Ericsson is the first ICT company to report according to the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and the Human Rights Reporting Framework.

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

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