Telefónica’s commitment to sustainability translates into active work to mitigate the environmental impact of its operations and to contribute to the green and digital transition of various sectors. One of its main goals is to achieve zero net carbon emissions by 2040 across its entire value chain. And connectivity, innovation and digitisation are key pillars to achieve this and move towards a more sustainable economy.
But network transformation not only drives sustainability, it also enables multiple operating systems and applications to run on general-purpose servers, promoting more efficient resource management. Telefónica is immersed in the company’s Autonomous Network Journey (ANJ) company programme, which aims to transform the systems and networks. In this context, it seeks to improve energy efficiency, optimise energy costs and move towards the goal of zero net emissions.
One of the main focuses of ANJ is deploying networks with sustainable criteria from their design. To do this, Telefónica has evaluated its IT infrastructure through the two mentioned energy studies, comparing the efficiency of virtualized environments with Bare Metal environments.
In the first study, the IMS network function (MTAS + CSCF), supporting voice and SMS services over LTE networks, was analyzed using the indicator consumption per subscriber (Watts/Subs). The second study focused on the Session Border Controller (SBC) network function, which regulates and protects IP communication flows, comparing energy efficiency using the indicator of consumption per voice calls (Watts/CAP).
To make a fair comparison between both environments, technological correction factors were applied to evaluate servers under similar conditions in terms of characteristics, functionalities, memory, and processor performance. The results showed that virtualized environments have superior energy efficiency by up to 27% compared to Bare Metal environments.
In conclusion, consolidating servers in virtualized environments not only reduces the need for physical hardware, improving operational efficiency, but also significantly contributes to reducing energy consumption. With the continuous advancement of virtualization technologies and the pursuit of improved energy efficiency, Telefónica will continue to adopt such solutions in its networks, aiming to reduce its carbon footprint and promote more sustainable practices.
