Is 5G green, or will it burn up more resources?
The tech industry has long tried to align with the green movement, though its leaders are often accused of spouting nebulous slogans and making hard-to-test pledges. The Mobile World Congress (MWC 2022), an industry get-together in Barcelona, certainly saw some sloganeering. But Huawei, Orange and industry body GSMA attempted to flesh out some of the green claims made about 5G.
The next-generation mobile network is being rolled out across the globe, with promises of super-fast internet going hand-in-hand with claims of massive benefits for the environment.
Laurence Williams of Sussex university in the UK recently led research assessing the available evidence on the supposed green gains of 5G.
He told AFP how the industry's claims stack up.
Jean-Marie Chaufray of Orange hailed power-saving features such as "sleep modes", whereby components are switched off when they are not being used, and more energy efficient antennae and other hardware.
He told the MWC that 5G would be "10 times more efficient" than 4G by 2025.
Laurence Williams: "Energy efficiency is only half of the equation. The total amount of data traffic being transmitted across mobile networks clearly matters too.
"Mobile data traffic is set to continue growing dramatically in the coming years. It is increasingly acknowledged that 5G will at least in part be the cause of this data traffic growth.
"Various estimates have been put out by the industry -- some suggest network energy consumption will fall, others that it can remain flat, at least one estimate suggests that network energy consumption will rise due to 5G.
"A recent study from Finland estimated that electricity consumption of the main mobile networks in 2017 was roughly 10 percent higher than in 2010. The
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