The telecom industry has achieved some significant energy consumption reductions for modems, routers, set-top boxes (STBs), and other equipment in the dozen years since a pair of voluntary agreements were established, according to an audit report from D+R International.
The agreements are supported by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), NCTA – The Rural Broadband Association and CableLabs.
D+R says that one telecom agreement, which focuses on modems, routers, and other home internet access equipment, has reduced energy consumption — in the form of weighted average power demand — 89% relative to broadband speeds since 2015, the press release says.
The D+R report also says that video services agreement has led to annual energy consumption by STBs to be cut by two-thirds and has saved telecom consumers more than $18 billion. The reductions have avoided released of more than 93 million metric tons of CO2. That is equivalent to emissions from 21.9 million cars for a year.
The agreements call for at least 90% of new STBs or small network equipment purchases to meet efficiency levels. Last year, 99.7% of STBs and 98.6% of new home Internet devices did so. And, the press release says, all companies met the telecom energy consumption limits individually.
The report also looked at savings made possible by the transition to devices that are Internet Protocol-driven and support both live and recorded content. This compares to digital video recorders (DVRs) that store recorded content at user sites. The new approach consumes 24.3 kWh per year compared to 267 kWh per year that was consumed by DVRs in 2012, the year the agreements were established.
Service providers that are party to the voluntary telecom energy consumption agreements are Altice USA, AT&T/DIRECTV, Charter, Comcast, Cox, DISH, Frontier, and Verizon. Manufacturers are Actiontec, ASUS, CommScope, eero, Google, Linksys, Netgear, Plume, Sagemcom, TP-Link, Vantiva, and Ubee Interactive.
“The voluntary agreements demonstrate the long-time commitment from the tech industry to improve energy efficiency, reducing energy costs for consumers,” said Doug Johnson — Vice President of Emerging Technology Policy for the CTA — of the lower telecom energy consumption.
“With the increased demand for connected devices, service providers and manufacturers continue to innovate, introducing new and improved features, while promoting greater energy savings.”
In early April, the NTIA undertook an effort to streamline National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews for Broadband for All projects. The streamlining involved 30 category exclusions.
