Viewpoint Article

Steven Moore, Head of Climate Action at GSMA and Mobile Sector Lead for the UN’s Climate Champions, talks about the three Cs at the heart of COP27, and how the mobile industry is contributing to the fight against climate change

In my role as Head of Climate Action at GSMA, last year I was privileged to attend the recent COP27 climate conference in Egypt, joining conversations with global impact, and hear talks from some of the brightest minds on the planet. As we look ahead to COP28 this year, I’m keen to discuss the output of COP27, examining the important role the mobile industry must play in helping to enable the change that’s needed to protect our climate.

One of the biggest messages to come out of COP27 was that there’s still a great deal to be done for the world to stand a chance at meeting any of its climate targets and, ultimately, to achieve the aspirational goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C. As the global industry body representing a very influential sector, the GSMA takes our role in helping the environment extremely seriously – bringing relevant parties together through collaboration, focusing activity on impactful action and clear measurement, and advising on the most innovative technologies to help solve some of the biggest climate challenges.

The mobile industry has always been at the forefront of climate action and the fight to reduce carbon emissions. Mobile was one of the first industries to commit to achieving Net Zero by 2025 and mobile operators – our members – are among the companies making the strongest progress in this arena; many are already using 100% renewable energy across their networks, whilst others are driving hard towards that goal.

So, what are the next steps for the mobile industry when it comes to tackling climate change? The conversations at this year’s conference largely boiled down to three things. I call them the three Cs: Carbon, Cost and Crisis. In this article, I’ll be looking at the way the GSMA and our mobile operator members have, and will, navigate the three Cs to challenge climate change head-on.

Carbon

Of course, one of the central discussions at COP27 was how businesses worldwide can come together to keep the 1.5C target alive. Meeting this goal requires all carbon emissions to be halved by 2030 and eliminated entirely by 2050. With emissions still rising year on year, there’s a lot to be done to change the trajectory.

The mobile industry is arguably leading the way in this area – maximising the use of renewable energy across their networks. Our latest stats show that mobile networks in 41 out of 86 countries worldwide are using more than 75% renewable energy. European networks were especially thriving in this space; they’re purchasing on average 71% renewable energy.

A strong example of this is Vodafone’s recently announced power purchasing agreement to buy renewable energy generated by three new solar farms in the UK. We know that, to hit net zero ambitions while meeting the scale of demand, there will need to be greater collaboration between the private and public sector to expand renewable energy infrastructure. Vodafone’s announcement shows that coordinated action with national policymakers and energy generators is possible to ensure that more renewable energy can be rapidly added to electricity grids over the next decade.

Cost

Another pressing matter at this year’s COP was the rapidly rising cost of energy. Many countries across Europe were dependent on the fossil fuels coming from Russia and, even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russia was able to dictate the cost of energy, which had been rising exponentially since the pandemic. Since the invasion, energy prices have risen even more sharply, with imports from Russia thought to be costing Europe at least €1 billion a day.

Another argument for the use of renewable energy is cost. Renewables can be generated and managed in-country, providing energy security, and significantly reducing the reliance on fossil fuels from Russia. To achieve this, most countries need to invest in infrastructure, not only to generate enough renewable energy, but to store and distribute that energy – in the case of mobile, to far-reaching networks of cell towers.

Once again, success in this area requires collaboration. At the moment, the GSMA predicts that the mobile industry will require 64TW hours of renewable energy, above and beyond current supply, by 2030. That’s the equivalent of the annual energy use of country the size of Austria. It requires a considerable transition: shifting away from a global system that is currently 84% dependent on fossil fuels.

Crisis

With Russia the subject of international sanctions, and European gas supplies at risk, the region is facing its biggest energy crisis in decades.

We don’t know how long this crisis will last – it is unlikely to be a short-term issue. If more isn’t done to manage our energy use, we could be facing outages this winter. However, in the longer-term it’s a further sign that in a time of significant geopolitical tensions, we’re too reliant on fossil fuels and cross-border co-operation that may be a thing of the past.

Investment in on-shore renewable energy generation, as well as digitalisation of national grid networks – can help governments and energy companies identify, and respond to, any situations as they arise in the future, using national resources.

Investing in infrastructure – Smart Energy Systems

Switching to renewable energy can be the solution to all of the three Cs, but we need to modernise and digitalise national grid systems to ensure they are a success.

To date, a lot of discussions have focused on renewable technologies such as solar, wind, tidal and hydropower in their own right. But we’ll need to bring all of them together to create enough power to meet current levels of energy demand. Unlike with fossil fuels, it’s harder to dial up renewable energy into the grid to meet surges at peak times, so we’re working closely with energy companies and governments on a solution to help everyone better understand how energy is used and when. Initially, we’ll need to supplement renewables with fossil fuels at peak times, but eventually the goal is to transition to 100% renewables. This is where Smart Energy Systems (SES) come in.

SES are a new solution, which combine energy generation and storage technologies with ‘intelligent’ applications, controlling and optimising their usage. They will be key to meeting targets from companies and governments increasingly aiming for net zero emissions by 2050 or sooner.

A SES is based on connectivity – mobile connectivity, in particular. That’s why we’re putting ourselves at the core of their creation, and are working with energy companies and MNOs to deploy them. The mobile sector will be essential to providing the backbone infrastructure for SES, which work using wireless connectivity to combine multiple solar farms, or thousands of homes with small-scale renewables or storage systems. Cloud computing helps us manage the systems – and AI platforms are added to control and optimise the use and storage of renewable energy resources, and work out if energy needs to be pulled from the grid at optimal times. Gradually the systems keep building the most optimal network for renewable supply and demand until we can fully decarbonise and retire fossil-fuels from the existing energy mix.

Getting SES up and running will boil down to three key steps, with wireless connectivity running through all of them: maximising the lifetime power output of renewable generation assets, minimising excessive energy consumption through end-use and transmission, and optimising load shifting and energy storage to align clean power supply and demand.

It’ll be no mean feat, but if we can implement SES, the benefits are potentially enormous. For one thing, we’ll prevent an overbuild of capacity worth 16,000TWh of annual generation. Based on today’s electricity prices, this will save approximately $1.9 trillion per year. And, on top of that, compared to today’s energy mix, an SES infrastructure will save emissions of 7.7 billion tons of CO2, making it responsible for over 23 per cent of global decarbonisation. It’s why GSMA is so passionate about these systems. It’s my hope that by next year’s COP, the industry will have made even more tangible steps towards their introduction, and laid the foundation for a true, mobile technology-based solution to help Europe navigate the three Cs.

Want to keep up with all the latest international telecoms news? Sign up now to receive Total Telecom’s daily newsletter

Also in the news:
Bouygues Telecom lays out 2G and 3G sunsetting plans
Ofcom leans towards permitting Openreach’s Equinox 2 price cuts
Nokia: The new Metaverse and our 2030 Vision

Mobile operator O2 (VMO2) has recommitted to continue their existing policy of retaining inclusive EU roaming as a standard feature on their plans, which they claim could be helping to save an average family of four around £100 during a two-week trip away. Across the UK, this could be saving as much as £3m per […]

We’ve recently been talking a lot about the challenges being faced by alternative broadband network providers (AltNets) and related ISPs in the UK, so it’s worth taking a minute to scan over the latest data from Intelligens Consulting. This summarises the build plans and changing market shares of the largest ten players. At present around […]

UK ISP Fibrus, which is deploying a new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband networks across N.Ireland and the North of England, has today claimed that it now “offers [the] fastest broadband services in Northern Ireland” and has “launched” a “service at 10 Gigabits per second (Gbps)“. But no, you can’t actually buy this.. yet. Consumers who read […]

Consumers looking to join UK ISP Virgin Media (VMO2) may like to know that the provider has started this week by refreshing their discounts for new customers, which among other things includes 6 months of half-price service on their standalone ultrafast broadband plans (i.e. on the 125Mbps to 500Mbps tiers). As usual, new customers can […]

The Worcestershire County Council (WCC) in England has committed to help ensure that 90% of premises across the county will be able to access a gigabit-capable broadband ISP network by 2027, which will be partly funded via clawback (gainshare) from their earlier rollout programme with Openreach (Superfast Worcestershire). Just to recap. The original Superfast Worcestershire […]

News

The French operator said it will shut down its 2G networks in 2026, followed by its 3G network in 2029

This week, Bouygues Telecom’s B2B Market Director, Jean-Christophe Ravaux, has been quoted by French news media L’Usine Digitale suggesting that the company still has a few years to go before shutting down its 2G and 3G networks.

According to the article, Ravaux says that the French mobile operator is aiming to shut down its 2G network in 2026 and its 3G network by 2029.

“The closure of these networks is a fundamental trend because these technologies are coming to an end,” he said. “That’s why it makes sense to reallocate these frequencies to 4G and 5G for better quality of service. This is the meaning of the story. We have therefore decided, after studying the interest for our customers, to switch off our 2G network at the end of 2026 and our 3G network at the end of 2029.”

This schedule is roughly in-line with that the company’s local rivals; Altice France (SFR) said earlier this year that they are also aiming to decommission their 2G network in 2026 and their 3G network by the end of 2028, with Orange saying it would target 2025 for the shutdown of 2G and 2028 for 3G.

It is worth noting here that strategies regarding the shutdown of 2G and 3G networks vary widely from market to market. In the UK, for example, all of the national mobile operators have committed to shutting down their 3G networks by the end of 2024, though 2G networks may, in some cases, remain operational until 2033.

This is because 2G networks provide a useful low-power fallback, is well suited for machine-to-machine communications (such as for smart meters), and in some cases is the only network available in some of the country’s most rural regions.

France’s neighbour Germany has been even faster to sunset these older networks, with all of the country’s mobile operators having shut down their 3G services already, and most targeting 2G decommissioning by the end of 2025.

Also in the news:
Regulators set deadline for decision on Orange–VOO tie-up
Virgin Media O2 to create hundreds of apprenticeships roles
Bullish Jansen questions need for choice

News

The regulator says its provisional view is to not intervene over Openreach’s plans to further reduce fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) product prices for ISPs

Today, Ofcom has opened a consultation on Openreach’s controversial proposed discount plan, Equinox 2, which would offer major discounts to ISPs purchasing the operators wholesale fibre products.

In its statement, Ofcom said that their provisional decision would be to allow this latest wave of discounts, saying that the move would not threaten competition.

“We have carefully assessed Openreach’s offer – taking into account the interests of consumers, as well as the impact on competitors and retail broadband providers,” Ofcom said in a statement. “Our provisional view is that we should not intervene to prevent Openreach from introducing Equinox 2. We consider the offer is not anti-competitive and is consistent with the rules we consulted on before introducing them under our market review in 2021. Maintaining these rules for the period of the review is also important to achieving certainty for all companies looking to invest in broadband networks.”

“In our provisional view, the proposed offer is consistent with our primary strategic goal of promoting investment in high-speed networks to deliver fast, affordable broadband to people and business across the UK.”

Openreach’s Equinox discounts are a controversial topic for the UK fibre industry.

The original Equinox discounts were first envisaged following the publication of Ofcom’s Wholesale Fixed Telecoms Market Review back in March 2021. Regulatory changes within this document allowed Openreach to potentially launch a range FTTP product discounts – now knowns as Equinox 1 – saying doing so would help keep their products competitive versus the typically cheaper products available from altnets.

In case cases, these original Equinox offers would provide price cuts for ISPs of up to a third for fibre products.

Naturally, this was a controversial proposal, with the UK’s altnet community arguing that it would be unfeasible for them to drop their prices to similar levels, thereby squeezing them out of the market. They also argued that this pricing would be a huge barrier for new market entrants to compete with the incumbent.

Nonetheless, Ofcom ultimately allowed Openreach to launch the Equinox offers, which were formally introduced in October 2021.

Now, Ofcom’s seemingly affable attitude towards further discounts in the form of Equinox 2 could set the altnets on the war path once again. While the provisional decision is certainly in keeping with Ofcom’s original ruling over Equinox 1, additional discounts will heap further pressure onto altnets and we are likely to see significant push-back during this consultation period.

In fact, some legal challenges against these discounts have already been raised, with CityFibre lodging an official complaint to the Competition and Markets Authority late last year, arguing that Ofcom was allowing Openreach to pursue “an aggressive strategy to foreclose infrastructure competition in the UK fibre broadband market”.

This is not the first time that CityFibre has been at the helm of a legal challenge against Equinox, having seen a previous appeal to the Competition Appeal Tribunal rejected last year.

Ofcom’s final decision on Equinox 2 will be announced at the end of March.

How will Openreach’s Equinox discounts affect the UK fibre market? Join the broadband community in discussion at this year’s live Connected North conference

Also in the news:
Regulators set deadline for decision on Orange–VOO tie-up
Virgin Media O2 to create hundreds of apprenticeships roles
Bullish Jansen questions need for choice

Mobile operator Three UK has confirmed that they too have joined EE (here) and Vodafone (here) in starting to rollout their ultrafast 5G (mobile broadband) service on the London Underground (tube trains), with Archway, Tufnell Park, and Notting Hill Gate stations this week becoming the first to be upgraded. David Hennessy, Three UK’s CTO, told […]

A short but interesting debate took place yesterday in the House of Lords (Parliament), which saw many cross-party peers call on the UK government – represented by Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (DCMS) – to do more to help tackle the impact of recent above-inflation price hikes by broadband ISPs. The debate, which provides an […]