Industry's green push builds momentum

'Going green' was a major discussion point during the week. The potential for green technology to reduce operating costs was probably the major catalyst for such debate (especially in light of the general industry slowdown) but there is also now a clear growing interest from vendors and operators to reduce their carbon footprint and build on global momentum in this area. Solar-powered handsets were all the rage last week – with LG and Samsung among the big-name vendors to unveil such devices – but ZTE grabbed most attention with its claim that its new handset is the world's first 'low-cost' solar-powered mobile phone. The challenge now is how many of these solar-powered devices can be sold commercially, and where? On the equipment side, many of the world's major network infrastructure vendors – including Nokia Siemens Networks, Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson – touted energy-efficient kit, whilst the GSMA highlighted progress in its efforts to promote green power for base stations via operator deployments in Sri Lanka and Vanuatu. Taken in terms of general mobile industry development, such progress could be viewed as relatively small-scale and niche. But it likely marks the beginning of a much stronger eco push over the next few years by both operators and vendors.

(This article is part of a series of follow-ups on Mobile World Congress 2009 from the GSMA Intelligence team.)