The green generation: bridging 5G and 6G

This report is the second in a two-part series from GSMA Intelligence in partnership with Microsoft on the sustainable design and operation of telecoms networks in the 5G era. The first report examined the wider picture of climate commitments made across the telecoms sector, and the equipment upgrades designed to improve the energy efficiency of RAN and core networks.

This report extends this to the ‘avant-garde’ of telecoms network change – specifically, cloud-native models involving two key technology areas: open RAN and edge computing. It explores the energy implications of a broad shift in computing workloads to the cloud and, in the context of enterprise digitisation, edge computing using both 5G and localised datacentres. The report also casts light on the importance of energy efficiency being incorporated into the standards governing 5G-Advanced and 6G networks.