FROM THE INDUSTRY
than the year before, demonstrating the European appetite for fibre technology. The construction market momentum is quite closely related to interest rates, at over 3.5% for months now. When money is tight, it is human nature to approach things differently. Germany may want to accelerate the adoption of disruptive technologies. Especially as our consumption is only going up. Yes, according to AD Little, in France and in Germany on average a household is consuming 200Gb per month. That’s expected to grow to 1,000Gb by 2030. ETNO showed in a recent study that around 70% of traffic is video streaming. That’s a good thing for the industry but the demand might increase quicker than the decarbonisation offered by fibre, leading to higher carbon emissions. This is known as the rebound effect. In a study from the Shift Project, carbon emissions from digital occupies around between 3% and 4% of worldwide emissions, increasing by 6% to 8% per year, putting huge pressure on energy consumption, also questioning the use of digital altogether. Sustainability targets must surely be squeezed as a result of all this. I’ve been on the board of the FTTH Council for a year; I’ve led an initiative to encourage our member companies to produce their own carbon assessment. We built a model that ensured the data remained confidential, we aggregated the data and built a model for the entire sector. The results have been published in a white paper, ‘FTTH Carbon Footprint Project - A Reporting Model for the Whole Sector’, available now . [And available for you to read on page 94 - Ed. ] That kind of work stands to benefit everyone. Absolutely; as a result, we have extended this out to the whole industry, beyond just FTTH members. We just launched the “FTTH Council Carbon footprint cooperative platform” which aims to provide a peer space to either collectively train to assess an organisation’s carbon emissions, or share and get sector data to accelerate its own assessment.
Can you predict what the situation will be like in five years’ time? Difficult to say. I would only comment the work ongoing by the European Commission, and the white paper recently released “How to master Europe’s digital infrastructure needs?” What are the key levers that still need to be pulled to reach a Digital and sustainable Gigabit society by 2030? I see mostly two: First, the need for a clear frame and agenda for the copper switch-off. As any other large investment, as it is for infrastructures, visibility is definitely an incentive for investment. Secondly, although fibre is proven to be the greenest telecom technology, it is not yet in the EU taxonomy for green investment. According to SBTi, Digital has the capability to decrease the carbon emission of the industry by 15%, but this would be even more efficient, if fibre technology was seen by all players as a strategic green technology. Hopefully to become the first neutral continent by 2050!
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May 2024 Volume 46 No.2
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