The 19th Convergence India 2011 Expo organized by the Exhibitions India Group, and currently being held at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi, was today buzzing with business-to-business interactions. In addition to Telecom and Broadcasting, the exhibition floor had strong presence from the Broadband and LTE companies. The focus of the industry towards the two technologies clearly indicates the emerging trends and the growth path for the ICT sector.

At the concurrently held conference, a special session was conducted by Huawei Telecommunications to highlight strategies for successful implementation of LTE technology. The conference also covered discussions on digitalization,3G ,wireless broadband, network health, VAS, rural infrastructure and green ICT.

India has over 300,000 telecom towers for which implementation of green solutions is a daunting task. With over 15 million telecom subscribers being added every month there would be a corresponding need to add over 13,000 BTS’ per month. This would translate to diesel consumption of a staggering figure of 6 million litres on a monthly basis.

There was a general consensus in the telecom industry on the business case for going green. Operators who have been looking at energy saving options to reduce their opex felt, around 25% -30% reductions were achievable through green energy options. The amount of savings for a pan-India operator, based on this magnitude, would translate into over Rs. 1 billion per quarter.

According to Mr. Rajat K. Mukarji, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, Idea Cellular Ltd., there is no single green solution (wind, solar, bio-fuels etc.) that can be implemented on a nationwide basis due to the diverse conditions in terms of climate, resources, geography etc. He emphasized on the need for a forward looking telecom policy that embraces this reality. Huge amount of investments and clear roadmap would be required to implement green solutions in the telecom sector. The moot point taken up at the session was to identify the key drivers. Mr. Mukarji asserted that the Indian Govt. needs to give stimulus to these efforts. According to Mr. Sandeep Kashyap, CTO, Acme Tele Power Ltd. we need to view the problem in a collaborative manner. All stakeholders including consumers, IP-1 players, service providers and vendors need to play their part. Mr. Arun Kumar, AGM-R&D, ITI Ltd. advocated the idea of active sharing where two operators share equipment such as feeder cables, nodes and RAN Tx Systems. This has been implemented quite successfully in overseas markets. Mr. Danesh Bansal, CTO, Indus Towers Ltd. put forth an idea to combat the challenge of alternative fuel logistics i.e. distributing or accessing the alternative energy source for multiple sites. According to him the concept of a ‘Green Fuel Hub’ shared by telecom operators should be explored.