For Operators, Green Is A Future-Proofing ‘Must Do’
At yesterday’s Smart Energy Management Initiative (SEMI) Forum in Philadelphia, sponsored by the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE), the future of power and bandwidth, of course, was top of mind.
Even though cablecos have been addressing the energy issue by embracing the cloud, that move may not be enough moving forward. According to keynote speaker Mark Coblitz, senior vice president/Strategic Planning at Comcast, “We are concerned that someday—certainly not immediately, but foreseeably within the next five to 10 years from now—we will be faced with the reality that our ability to grow will be constrained by the quantity and timing of obtaining electrical power.”
He offered an example: A mandate to implement RS-DVR instead of a network DVR would require 60 times the power—in total, roughly one-third of the output of a nuclear plant. As such, Coblitz suggests, a increased focus on going green needs and standardized language needs to be adopted across the board as new networks are designed and redesigned.