By Zhang Qi (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-12-15 13:40

All Ericsson GSM radio base stations installed in China after 1995 are expected to get new software by next year that will cut energy use by 10 to 20 percent, the company said on Friday.

"Ericsson is the only telecom service provider on the market to install energy-saving software to old equipment," said Ulf Ewaldsson, vice-president and head of radio networks at Ericsson, the world's largest telecom service provider.

During periods of low traffic, the software puts parts of the network not being used on standby mode, rather than keeping radio equipment switched on and wasting energy.

Depending on the network traffic pattern, the software could save 10 to 20 percent of the energy used per base station, while still providing the same services and quality to end users, the company said.

"The first base station using the software was in India in spring this year," said Ewaldsson. "We just announced Vodafone Germany as the first operator to install the software into commercial operation today, and we look forward to the software being upgraded across all our base stations by the end of 2008 in China.

"Reducing energy consumption makes the telecommunications industry a positive contributor to the response to climate change. It also reduces operational costs for operators, so it is a win-win solution."

If deployed across the one million GSM Ericsson base stations globally, the power-saving feature could see a reduction of one million tons in carbon dioxide emissions, Ericsson said.

"There are nearly one million Ericsson transceivers in China. If every transceiver can reduce 10 to 20 percent of its energy consumption by using the new feature, one billion yuan can be saved," said Zhao Juntao, vice-president of Ericsson China.

Ericsson received the China Information Industry Energy-Efficiency Innovation Award last week, as part of the seventh Annual Economic Conference of China's IT Industry in Beijing.

Ericsson said it would improve the energy efficiency of its base stations by up to 80 percent by the end of next year, compared to the levels of 2001.

In 2006, Ericsson reduced the power consumption of its latest generation of WCDMA base stations by 35 percent and has adopted alternative energies like biofuels and solar power in areas with no access to the power grid.