• The Next Generation Mobile Networks Alliance (NGMN Alliance) urges work on “ground-breaking” green network measurement methodology 
• The organization points to advantages such as increased investments and the identification of key actions impacting a network’s green credibility
• According to the Alliance, the new standards should be developed through combined efforts by the ecosystem, academia and benchmarking companies

BARCELONA – Mobile World Congress 2022 – The NGMN Alliance (Next Generation Mobile Networks Alliance) addressed one of the biggest challenges in the industry right now during a press and industry presentation here in Barcelona, outlining how it plans to create a “ground-breaking” methodology to evaluate the sustainability quality of telecoms networks.

The Alliance’s Chairman, Arash Ashouriha, who is also Deutsche Telekom’s SVP of Group Technology Innovation, made an analogy with methodologies developed throughout the years on measuring the quality of a mobile network.

“We strongly believe we need the same methodology to measure and benchmark sustainability. If you’re able to measure a green network, everyone will go and invest because no one wants to look bad,” Ashouriha noted.

He also noted that such a measurement would help companies identify what they really need to do and “what action drives which impact.”

He admitted this is a challenging endeavour as it also has competitive aspects but added that the Alliance wants to drive a standard way of how green networks should be benchmarked.

Asked by TelecomTV on who would make the most suitable collaborators for such a move, Ashouriha said there is no firm conclusion as yet. “What I can tell you is it will be a combination. We will need, from a methodology perspective, academia, but to be frank, there are companies out there… that invented the network benchmarking, they have a great methodology,” the NGMN’s Chairman explained.

He said a lot of the learning from these companies and academia, in addition to intelligence within the telecoms ecosystem and operator community, can be jointly applied to the methodology move.

“In my humble personal view, even though in NGMN ‘M’ stands for ‘mobile’, for those who have converged operations – no matter if it’s cable or fibre fixed – you need to look at the end-to-end network, not just mobile,” Ashouriha concluded.

- Yanitsa Boyadzhieva, Deputy Editor, TelecomTV