SCTE and cable operators have pledged to reduce network energy use by 2020 and Network World recently wrote about the power costs behind the PSTN and the benefits of IP transition. One quick and easy way for cable operators and telcos to do that is to turn off the voice network and put it in the cloud — not their cloud, but the cloud voice platform. Power savings, going green, and reducing cooling are all initiatives that are good for the world at large and help the bottom line as well.
Yes, service providers can reduce their energy footprint by building next-gen networks using the smaller and more efficient equipment levering virtualization technologies, but they can go further by leveraging the cloud and what’s already been built. Service providers can leverage the flexible, always-on cloud voice platform to deliver VoIP.
With the cloud voice platform, power savings related to VoIP are 100%. After migration, the existing VoIP equipment can be decommissioned and you can eliminate the racks of whirring servers and blowing fans from media gateways and softswitches. Alianza and other providers in this cloud solution space can run a more power-efficient platform; the power draw across the subscriber base or on a per-call basis, the cost per watt of the cloud voice platform will be lower per watt. And there is no direct hard cost to the service provider; we pay to power the cloud.
The physical footprint of the central office or data space is smaller too. That freed up space could further reduce costs where colocation charges are a concern or provides room for new gear to power emerging services.
These cost savings are part of the total cost of ownership reduction that a cloud voice platform delivers. Beyond the success-based SaaS model, streamlined management, and operational efficiencies, the cloud makes voice greener.
Read more about the push to the cloud in our white paper Service Provider VoIP: Next Gen is the Cloud.