Ericsson offers lowest energy consumption

Ericsson declares that its network IP edge and metro platforms deliver the industry’s lowest energy consumption.

This is based on new metrics that measure how efficiently they can provide subscriber services, such as residential Triple Play. Since the IP edge and metro Ethernet platforms are responsible for aligning, shaping and monitoring subscriber traffic they are the logical hot spots for service providers to target.

Ericsson’s new metrics provide practical views into energy efficiency, mapping energy usage granularly by subscriber and circuit. The new metrics are the latest sustainability effort from Ericsson, which in 2008 committed to providing up to a 40 percent reduction in carbon emissions per subscriber within 5 years.

In addition to the focus on the IP edge and metro Ethernet, Ericsson has reported significant reductions in energy usage for its WCDMA radio base stations (an 80 percent improvement in energy efficiency from 2001 to 2008), for its mobile softswitch solution (60 percent more efficiency per subscriber), and for site power management.

Iometrix, a well-known network testing authority, was commissioned to test and verify the results of the SmartEdge Multi Service Edge Router and SM 480 metro Ethernet platform using the new metrics. Iometrix reported both platforms became more efficient the higher the subscriber or circuit load.

For the IP edge, Iometrix tested the power needed to deliver multimedia-enabled subscriber services for varying subscriber traffic loads of up to 256,000 subscribers. The SmartEdge showed a 53-280% power savings per subscriber. For the metro, 60-80 percent power savings per circuit was shown.

“Power consumption at the edge and metro has always been important to carriers and a critical factor in OpEx,” said Glen Hunt, principal analyst at Current Analysis.  “As the leading provider of telecom equipment and services, Ericsson is leading the way in providing more relevant and practical metrics for determining the efficiency of carrier IP networking equipment.”