Reducing energy usage and emissions toward carbon neutrality is a key goal for telecom operators.

This creates several challenges, as well as opportunities for China Mobile – not least scale: the operator provides services to 950 million individuals and 18.8 million industrial customers.

There are also factors to consider such as differentiated energy-saving requirements from industrial customers, imbalances in computing power demands and energy supplies between regions, and different network structures and customer habits among 31 regional subsidiaries.

China Mobile worked in partnership with Huawei to implement a ‘green 5G’ solution

It enables the operator to save energy on large-scale networks across multiple domains without degrading service experience. It includes new integrated 5G base station energy cabinets and the use of AI to automatically shut down and restart base stations based on resource requirements.

Slicing packet network (SPN) technology dynamically saves network energy based on the flow of traffic. All-optical cross-connect (OXC) technology reduces the energy consumption of transmission devices. In addition, smart cooling technology at data centers improves power usage effectiveness by 10%.

The solution also facilitates the intelligent scheduling of computing power for the most efficient use of clean energy. This balances resources between Eastern China which has an energy shortage and high demand for computing power and the Western region, which is rich in clean energy and data centers but with less computing power demand.

To drive consistent sustainable practices throughout the organization, China Mobile formulated standardized green 5G capability evaluation criteria for its 31 subsidiaries, based on TM Forum's autonomous networks' best practices.

As well as delivering internal benefits, the solution is also helping customers – particularly in industrial sectors which are also working to meet climate targets.

A centralized platform integrates various network capabilities to create tailored end-to-end products for customers. For example, real-time image detection and mobile edge computing capabilities help customers in the steel industry accurately grade and improve the utilization of steel scrap. Automotive customers are using real-time visual inspection AI to reduce the defect rate, and for customers in the energy industry, robot inspections and 5G slice assurance enable better management of power transformation and transmission to reduce the loss of electrical energy.

China Mobile and Huawei say the solution delivers cumulative benefits and is replicable across verticals.