ICT FOR GOOD: Ericsson says ICT is catalyst for more sustainable development

 Hans Vestberg, Ericsson CEO,

Ericsson's lobby at Headquarters in Stockholm

Ericsson's Indian Headquarters

By Prince Osuagwu

As technology equipment vendors, Ericsson releases its annual Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility report, the company has expressed its belief that the transformational potentials of ICT was capable of solving energy, environmental and social challenges.
Ericsson’s annual Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility report titled Technology for Good, was released last weekend even as it highlighted the company’s ongoing efforts to apply innovation to market based solutions that empower people and society to help create a more sustainable world.
According to the company’s President and CEO, Hans Vestberg, ICT has the potentials to put the world on the path of a low-carbon economy as a catalyst for more sustainable development and we have only begun to tap the possibilities of the Networked Society,”.
He said that Ericsson would continue to be a global advocate for the transformational power of ICT solutions to solve global energy, environmental and social challenges.
He was corroborated by his VP for Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility, Elaine Weidman-Grunewald, who said that “the Networked Society brings many opportunities and challenges. Wherever and however we work, we want to ensure that we are a force for good, and that our technology contributes to making the world a better place,”
In the report, Ericsson’s focused on some areas and initiatives including:
Low-carbon economy
In order to achieve a low-carbon economy, Ericsson’s aim is to continue delivering solutions that will result not in incremental but rather transformative change: where video conferencing substitutes business air travel, intelligent utility grids reinvent how we access and use energy, and cities are designed to be low-carbon. 
The ambition of the Stockholm Royal Seaport project is to reach CO2 emissions per inhabitant of 1.5 tonnes per year by 2020, compared to current average emissions of 5.6 tonnes in Sweden and 19.7 tonnes in the United States. Broadband will be a key enabler to reaching this goal.
Reducing networks’ environmental impact
The company explained that as data traffic grows, the ICT industry needs to increase network energy efficiency to reduce its contribution to global CO2 emissions. Absolute energy consumption is expected to increase over the next ten years, primarily due to adding approximately three times the number of subscribers and about a thousand fold increase in data growth.
However, the research indicated that network energy consumption is not on the same growth path as the increase in volume of traffic.  Instead, there has been an impressive decrease of energy needed to produce the data traffic, due to technology and product improvements, in combination with increasing data rates of 3G/WCDMA technologies.
Launch of Ericsson AIR,
This project is an antenna integrated radio unit that has been shown to reduce power consumption by 42 percent. The Network Energy Optimization. NEO, service helps operators to maximize subscriber traffic while at the same time reducing energy consumption.
Communication for all
The report also reflects Ericsson’s focus on enabling communications for all, including the 4 billion people living at the base of the pyramid.  The company said it would continue on efforts to use technology to help meet the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.
To that end, Vestberg joined the Broadband Commission for Digital Development which delivered recommendations to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to accelerate the attainment of the MDGs by 2015.