Portugal Telecom is one of the founding members of this initiative that was launched in London for a greener and more sustainable communications future. Alfredo Baptista, CTO of PT, explains that “PT is committed to the Green Touch initiative and we believe that, together with our partners, we can do more and better to preserve environment quality and ensure a significant difference”.

“Over the last few years, PT has dedicated itself to promoting the implementation of good environmental practices, having defined an environmental management policy, and mobilising resources so as to comply with the best environmental practices. Technological evolution, a smaller energy-dependency of the new equipment, cost-free cooling systems, the introduction and progressive availability of renewable energies are the main actions that we taking already so as to ensure the efficiency of our ICT networks and its carbon emissions”, explains Alfredo Baptista.

• Service Providers: AT&T, China Mobile, Portugal Telecom, SwissCom, Telefónica;
• Academic Research Labs: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Research Laboratory for Electronics (RLE), Wireless Systems Lab (WSL) of the University of Stanford, Institute for a Broadband-Enabled Society (IBES) of the University of Melbourne;
• Government Agencies and Nonprofits: CEA-LETI Applied Research Institute for Microelectronics (Grenoble, France), imec (Headquarters: Leuven, Belgium), INRIA (French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control);
• Industrial Labs: Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT), Freescale Semiconductor.

Bell Labs president Jeong Kim explained that “The consortium that we are forming serves as a major milestone along the path toward a future where the potential of communications networks to meet the demands of their users and benefit society is inextricably linked to our success in achieving environmental sustainability by reducing energy consumption”.

According to research from Bell Labs, current ICT networks have the potential to become 10,000 times more efficient than they are today. The consortium estimates that a thousand-fold reduction is about equal to how much energy it takes to power the world's communications networks, including the Internet, for three years using the same amount of energy it uses to run them for just one day. To support its objectives, the Green Touch Initiative will deliver a reference network architecture within five years.

 “Over the next decade billions more people will upload and share video, images and information over public and private networks as we communicate with each other in new, rich ways. We also expect ICT usage to dramatically increase as other industries use networks to reduce their own carbon footprints. This naturally leads to an exponential growth in ICT energy consumption, which we, as an industry, have to jointly address” said Gee Rittenhouse, consortium head and vice-president of research at Bell Labs.

The first consortium meeting will be held in London in February to establish the organisation’s five-year plan, define first-year deliverables and member roles and responsibilities.

Learn more at www.greentouch.org.