Europe : Most of the energy in a typical telecommunication network is consumed by the wireless network’s base station site. In response to this, Nokia Siemens Networks is focusing the first phase of its environmentally sustainable business solutions by today announcing offerings that dramatically improve the energy efficiency of its wireless networks, particularly the base stations and base station sites.

“The Energy Efficiency solution makes good green business sense,” said Ari Lehtoranta, head of the Radio Access business unit at Nokia Siemens Networks.  “By bringing state-of-the art products and software together with our Services portfolio for operators, we can reduce adverse environmental impact while also generating considerable cost savings for our operator customers.”

The four main elements of the solution are: minimizing the number of base station sites; minimizing the need for air conditioning to cool the sites; using the latest base station technology; and, deploying software features that optimize the use of radio access for wireless communications. The energy consumption of a base station site can be reduced by up to 70 percent with Nokia Siemens Networks’ Energy Efficiency solution. This significant reduction in energy consumption creates a more environmentally friendly network operation and lower operating costs for Nokia Siemens Networks’ operator customers.

Building a network with a minimum number of base station sites increases energy efficiency, and intelligent network planning is critical for identifying optimum site locations. The Nokia Siemens Networks Energy Efficiency solution uses software features to increase coverage, thus minimizing the number of required base station sites. The solutions also take advantage of innovative Nokia Siemens Networks planning products to create new types of sites in  previously non-viable locations. The Nokia Siemens Networks Flexi Base station, for example,  makes it possible for operators to locate complete base stations in places and positions where conventional base stations cannot be located due to limitations on size and weight.

Traditional base station sites are located indoors, where the typical temperature of 25˚C is maintained with high energy-consuming air conditioning. By increasing the ambient temperature to up to 40˚C, energy consumption can be reduced by up to 30 percent in existing base station equipment.

Nokia Siemens Networks utilizes a wide range of software features to improve base station energy efficiency by balancing consumption according to load. For example, because nighttime base-station traffic is much lower than during peak daytime hours, part of the base station can be shut down or its capacity can be set on power save mode at night. This is handled seamlessly by Nokia Siemens Networks’ intelligent network management solution, the NetAct Service Quality Manager. By leveraging the latest innovations in its software solutions, Nokia Siemens Network is helping operators reduce costs by lowering the energy consumption of base stations during off-peak hours -- without any impact on service levels for users of the network.

The telecommunications industry is striving to improve the energy efficiency of its latest-generation base stations. As the leader in wireless communication solutions that connect people and businesses in an environmentally sustainable way, Nokia Siemens Networks has made remarkable achievements in reducing energy consumption throughout its base station portfolio, achieving energy consumption levels of 800W and 500W respectively for typical GSM and WCDMA base stations. Going forward, the company has set even more ambitious targets: to further reduce the energy consumption of its GSM and WCDMA base stations to the 650W and 300W respectively by 2010.