Mobile industry says energy targets are meaningless without common metrics

The Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) alliance is calling for standardized ways to measure energy consumption, saying that the industry cannot deliver on its efficiency and sustainability goals without them.

A report issued by the association, which represents mobile operators and vendors, says that energy metering is not sufficiently standardized across the industry, and this hinders efforts to manage the energy footprint of networks.

A move from basic energy monitoring to more advanced observability and management is essential, according to the report, including the ability to map energy consumption to individual network functions, services, and slices.

Energy usage is becoming a major concern for mobile operators, according to the NGMN. This is hardly surprising given rising costs in many regions, while consumption is growing due to various factors. Because of this, detailed energy metering is set to become a standard feature of telecoms equipment.

The problem is that metering functions ...