Green Networking

I have been intrigued for a while about the term green networking as a thought of integrating sustainability aspects into the design of communication systems. Power-saving mechanisms for server, base stations and of course end devices come to mind in many dimensions of networking.

But there is another aspect of green that came to my mind today after reading yet another announcement of a mobile device manufacturer as to expectations for next year’s sales. While, e.g., Nokia is repeatedly listed as ‘being green’ in producing their hundreds of millions of electronic devices, it begs the question what the aspect of ‘greenness’ is behind a business model that tries to pursuade end users to buy a new device in less than a year’s time! And it is more than just the business model. Although it is debatable if mobile device manufacturers are simply not capable or not willing to allow easier upgrade of their mobile devices (or ‘mobile multimedia PCs’ as Nokia insists to call their high-end phones), it is clearly to be observed that often different models have desired yet only small feature upgrades which could simply be delivered via firmware or individual software upgrade rather than changing the entire device (would anybody change their PC just to get another small feature in MS Word?). Often also functionality is limited based on ‘market segments’. For instance, email solutions for Nokia’s N series are limited while the E series (both of which run the same S60 platform) has an abundance of solutions, making the right choice not only hard but often simply requiring device change without any particular platform difference.

Having worked for Nokia for almost seven years, I know how hard Nokia has been working on increasing their software and service competence (and the recent announcements of organizational change make this struggle even more obvious). But as long as the underlying and major business model of mobile device manufacturers will continue to build on the steady increase of device turnovers by end users, this industry is far away from becoming really green. Reusability of platform and easy upgrade of all features must become norm in the mobile device business. Only then, a company in that space can really be called green.