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Cover Story • Powering the network, even a passive optical network, also has significant environmental impacts. For example, the energy consumed in operating the network for 10 years releases about the same amount of greenhouse gases as are released by building the network. To reach its conclusions, Ecobilan had to make hundreds of assumptions about how the FTTH network would be built, what kinds of components and materials would be used, how many customers would be served, what kinds of fuel are used to generate electricity, and so forth. The researchers tried to use assumptions that were typical of fiber networks being deployed in the United States today – for example, they assumed a GPON network that was part aerial and part underground. The result, of course, is a picture of an “average” network that doesn’t correspond to any individual fiber-to-the-home network in existence today. And the numbers are already too conservative – Verizon alone is stimulating the market emergence of network components that use less energy today than they did last year. But all of the assumptions are spelled out in detail, and potential deployers can leverage the existing study themselves or work with Ecobilan to substitute information about their own planned networks for the “average” network that Ecobilan modeled. This will enable them to generate more precise estimates of the environmental impacts of their planned networks. Telecommuting Alone Recoups the Environmental Costs The biggest environmental benefit from FTTH networks today – in fact, nearly all of it – comes from telecommuting. This savings, according to Ecobilan, is large enough to offset the environmental impact of building and operating the network within four to six years, depending on network take rates. Most of the research on FTTH and telecommuting in the US has been done by Michael Render of RVA LLC, and Ecobilan relied on his historical research in developing its model. Render told Broadband Properties, “We have demonstrated consistently that fiber users are spending more time on average working from home. Those who have the opportunity are spending significantly more time.” Render also says the potential for telecommuting is far larger than current use patterns would indicate. “Companies have to certainly look at their procedures, in some cases changing their own internal regulations. Line people can’t easily work from home, but often more staff can,” he says. “And the idea of a blend, in the office so many days and home on other days, might be attractive to many workers and companies.” Render notes that in California, FTTH provider Paxio has been trying to work with companies to develop virtual private networks that employees can use. A big advantage for Paxio is that once a company is sold on the idea, it assists employees in setting up access. It may be less costly for the provider to market to relatively few companies than to many employees, and doing so is more likely to ensure that the telecommuting links actually get used. Even Better Than Telecommuting: Home-Based Businesses Even when companies are skittish about letting their employees work from home, fiber may give workers the opportunity to cut their ties to the office and go into business for themselves – eliminating the commute altogether, and adding to the environmental savings. An RVA survey published in 2007 found that 10 percent of respondents were using their FTTH connection to run a home-based business, with 90 percent of these saying that having a high-bandwidth fiber optic connection was either “very important” or “somewhat important” to their business activities. “There are some municipalities that are trying to use their broadband to train people in promoting opportunities for inhome businesses in their area, and the dollars that brings into communities,” Render says. He notes that many smaller communities have only one or two sources of outside income, such as agriculture or a single factory. The rest of the local economy simply circulates money already in the community, “from laundromat to restaurant and back.” “Economic development is a huge opportunity for these rural communities,” Render adds. “Now you have people in microbusinesses bringing in capital. RVA is a small business in Tulsa, but we sell reports throughout the world. And we talk to small consulting operations having national reach from rural areas such as in Washington state, and others doing advanced video editing, which really requires the bandwidth.” Reducing Business and Health-Related Travel Another prime target for energy savings is in the travel people do while they’re on the job – whether that’s travel across town or across the world. Render notes that fiber-based communication makes it easier for companies to grow without having to build new offices or shuttle between offices. “We have come across cases in some of these small towns where companies were buying VPN services to make expansion easier,” he says. “If you have a sudden 50 percent growth, for instance, it is cheaper and faster to rent space across town than to build an add-on structure next to the existing workspace. And videoconferencing, from the point of view of avoiding travel, even between buildings and nearby towns, in addition to work from home, can be a big time and energy saver.” The flexibility this offers to fiber-connected businesses has contributed to the continued strength of FTTH deployment in rural areas. “We’re still collecting data from smaller LECs, but I have not seen any real drop-off,” Render says. “I expect that there will be more a leveling off rather than a decline in 2009.” The public sector, as well as the private sector, is using fiber connections to avoid local travel, Render adds, citing “new uses such as video arraignment of people arrested – you get face-toface interaction, judge to jail, without transporting a prisoner to the courthouse.” The use of videoconferencing and other Web-based collaboration technologies to reduce long-distance travel in the era of global business is only beginning, but it holds out enormous 30 | BROADBAND PROPERTIES | www.broadbandproperties.com | January/February 2009
cover story Most of the research on FTTH and telecommuting in the US has been done by Michael Render of RVA LLC, and Ecobilan relied on his historical research in developing its model. Render told Broadband Properties, “We have demonstrated consistently that fiber users are spending more time on average working from home. Those who have the opportunity are spending significantly more time.” promise for future energy savings. A study by the American Consumer Institute estimated that greenhouse gas emissions would be reduced by 200 million tons if 10 percent of airline travel could be replaced by teleconferencing over the next 10 years. And case studies show that 10 percent is not an unreasonable goal: For example, pharmaceutical company Glaxo- SmithKline reports reducing travel costs by 20 percent after installing a telepresence system. (Telepresence, an immersive videoconferencing technology, relies on high-bandwidth, lowlatency connections.) During 2008, telepresence moved definitively out of the “early adopter” stage and into the mainstream; Frost & Sullivan principal analyst Dominic Dodd says, “Today, many corporations view telepresence in particular as a very realistic alternative to business travel, with ROI values that can justify its initial high price tag.” Frost & Sullivan expects the global telepresence market to grow to $1.4 billion by 2013. Travel to medical appointments can also be reduced through new applications for home-based medical monitoring and video consultations with physicians. (See “Healthy Business” in this issue.) As we reported last month, data collected by ConnectKentucky indicates that 37 percent of Kentucky broadband users say online access to health care information has saved them an average of 4.2 unnecessary trips to receive medical care in a single year – and that’s without any of the new high-tech solutions. Fiber to the home can enable true homebased health care and save a much larger number of trips. Beyond Travel: Cloud Computing Reducing travel isn’t the only way for FTTH to prove its worth as a green technology. Another major opportunity for energy reduction is in the data center. Even though information technology is net positive for the environment (every kilowatt-hour of electricity used by IT reduces overall energy use by a factor of 10, according to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy) information and communications technologies still account for about 2 percent of global carbon emissions, and energy costs are edging toward 50 percent of the IT budget. Concern about energy use in corporate data centers has inspired projects like the “Green Grid,” whose members are developing standards to measure data center efficiencies. The bandwidth and reliability of fiber are helping businesses move computing out of their own data centers and into the “cloud” – accessing their applications, storage and even raw computing power over the Internet instead of via a local area network. Cloud computing became a catchword – and a mainstream phenomenon – in 2008, after a long startup period. (The first attempts at delivering software as a service, a decade ago, failed in part because communication networks were not fast enough or reliable enough.) Analyst James Staten at Forrester Research calls cloud computing a “disruptive innovation.” Cloud computing has great potential for energy savings for several reasons. First, it enables the collaborative technologies that allow companies to avoid business travel. Beyond travel reduction, the economies of scale at massive data centers allow major improvements in cost and energy efficiency. IBM, which is opening huge cloud computing centers around the world, quotes Sanjay G. Dhande, director of the Indian Institute of Technology, saying, “Cloud computing enables server-centric virtualization, which helps the IT ecosystem to achieve a smaller footprint, efficient resource utilization and server con- The Fiber-to-the-Home Council, the IMCC and Broadband Properties Magazine Congratulate For becoming a Silver Sponsor at the 2009 Broadband Properties Summit. For more information on Connexion Technologies, visit www.connexiontechnologies.net. You are cordially invited to come see Connection Technologies at the upcoming April 27 – 29, 2009 Hyatt Regency DFW • Dallas, TX New Business Models For Fiber Communities To Exhibit or Sponsor, contact: Irene Prescott at irene@broadbandproperties.com, or call 316-733-9122. & For other inquiries, call 877-588-1649, or visit www.bbpmag.com January/February 2009 | www.broadbandproperties.com | BROADBAND PROPERTIES | 31
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