Telecom, Other Regulators Urged to Team Up for Environment

A central plank of EU policy is better use of information and communication technologies, and regulators are scurrying to find ways to spur investment in fiber. German regulator BNetzA, for instance, is looking at ways to allow operators to cooperate on deploying networks and sharing the risks, said Vice President Iris Henseler-Unger. Dutch authority OPTA has recently issued decisions to encourage additional fiber-to-the-home offers, said its next- generation access program manager, Gerard Boogert. French regulator ARCEP is about to approve rules for fiber rollout in very densely populated areas, and operators are preparing a proposal on shared access and investment, said Joelle Toledano, a member of the agency’s board.

But current regulation is based on “getting more kit into the ground” rather than working on climate change and energy savings, Frieslaar said from the audience. Boogert said environmental protection isn’t within OPTA’s authority. It doesn’t figure into agency decisions, which are concerned solely with how effective competition is, he said. There’s no rule saying effective competition will reduce the use of resources, he said. ARCEP is just starting to learn about energy conservation, Toledano said.

The European Regulators Group isn’t working on matters involving the effects of electronic technologies on the environment, but it will if the European Commission asks, said Roberto Viola, chairman-elect of the EU Radio Spectrum Policy Group. The more infrastructure is shared, the more energy is saved, he said in an interview. And the more products such as mobile phones are based on similar standards, the less diversity exists and the more used items are thrown away, he said.

Huawei wants to reduce energy use by its equipment and by the rest of the network, Frieslaar told us. As cloud computing and network services spread, regulators should be looking at virtualizing the world, he said. A piece of fiber forced into the ground may be good for competition but it raises energy issues, he said. The rush to deploy multiple network feeds into homes is not necessarily the most energy- efficient way of to provide telecom, he said.

Regulation should be smarter, Frieslaar said. Different sectors should cross-subsidize to help deploy networks in some areas, he said. EU rules require 270 million homes to have smart meters by 2020, and regulators in the telecom, energy, water and other sectors must start looking beyond the last mile to end-to-end services and how energy is used, Frieslaar said. Pulling the sectors together is where energy will be saved, he said. It’s fine for carriers to share the cost to lay fiber in a building, but it’s better for them to incorporate other sector services on their network in exchange for subsidization, he said.

Separately, network operators Wednesday urged the EC to make ICT and climate change top priorities for the next five years. The ICT sector can help Europe significantly cut CO2 emissions in line with the Copenhagen goals, said Director Michael Bartholomew of the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association.

To show how ICT can fight climate change, ETNO said it will set up “cool connections” with experts working on those issues and contribute to international research. At an event in Brussels, it showcased the International Polar Foundation, the first polar base entirely designed and built as a zero- emission structure thanks to ICT; the Solar Impulse Plane, the first world zero-fuel plane with a communications system developed by Swisscom; and the Svalbard Satellite Station in the Arctic, run by Norwegian telecom company Telenor.

By 2020, better integration of broadband-enabled applications in all sectors could help save up to 15 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, ETNO said. The EC should encourage businesses and residential users to choose low- carbon solutions over conventional ones, it said. ETNO also called for deployment of reliable high-speed networks.