New Power Sources Key To Expanding Mobile Phone Coverage

Dec 17, 2008 11:52 AM, MD&D News Staff

Telecommunications equipment and services provider Ericsson predicts that mobile phone subscriptions will grow to 6.5 billion worldwide by 2013, from 3.7 billion today. But about 90% of that growth will come in developing markets where more than half the population lives outside city limits, making it critical to develop green power sources that do not rely on a non-existent or unreliable grid.

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The company is working to meet this challenge with a combination of energy-efficient products and emphasis on network energy optimization. Wind power is one example of an alternative energy resource for powering mobile networks located beyond the electricity grid. Also, in 2007, Ericsson implemented biofuel as an alternative energy resource, and in 2000 Ericsson was the first telecom player to deploy a solar solution to power a Moroccan operator’s mobile network (Fig. 1).

“One example of what we have done to be able to offer mobile telephony to the billions of people living outside city limits is the introduction of a unique hybrid solution where we use submarine batteries that can be recharged over and over again to power a mobile network,” said Ulf Ewaldsson, vice president and head of product area radio at Ericsson. “This solution saves approximately 10,000 liters of diesel per radio site per year, which is 40% to 50% of the diesel needed. This adds up to large quantities of fuel that can be saved in a mobile network with hundreds or thousands of diesel powered radio sites.”