Mobile networks unplugged

Abstract

Mobile network access has seemingly become ubiquitous in industrialized countries. With data services becoming sufficiently fast, usable, and affordable, demand is growing rapidly, both in the number of users and in capacity -- since most Internet/web resources continue being tailored for fast fixed line access. A lot of engineering has gone into making mobile devices appealing and sufficiently power-conserving to last for at least a day in spite of the many emerging network-driven applications. However, this device-centric view fails to recognize the other side: the mobile access infrastructure. There, too, power consumption raises technical issues (not just) when moving towards faster mobile access and is de-facto an inhibiting factor for cellular expansion: for practical and for cost reasons. In this paper, we seek to raise awareness of the power consumption issues of mobile networks. We argue that mobile access will become, in addition to data centers and PCs, another contributing factor from the ICT sector to greenhouse gas emissions and that current mobile access technologies limit further network expansion in rural areas. Thus, we need to start working on making mobile networks much more energy-efficient than they are today, maybe even fully self-sustainable using renewable energy sources.