Sparring Partners | Vodafone’s power efficiency strategy

Improving sustainability and power efficiency are top-priority goals for most operators, but they are not trivial to achieve. It is more than using equipment that uses less energy. It requires a well-thought strategy that encompasses the end-to-end network.

Francesca Serravalle heads the efforts at Vodafone UK to develop and implement such a strategy, from the RAN all the way to the core and to the services. In this Sparring Partners, she shared what she has learned so far and what she plans to do to make Vodafone’s network more sustainable and power efficient without compromising performance and quality of service.

We also talked about how to measure power efficiency and how to improve it within the wireless ecosystem. We explored how energy efficiency is affected by changes in frequency (midband, mmWave, 6 GHz), by choosing an Open RAN or traditional architecture, and by virtualization and disaggregation.