How can improved energy efficiency reduce your costs?
The answer below may surprise you.
Arjan Tupan, Co-Chair of AmCham CSR committee talks to Jose Cristobal Alonso Martin,
Execution Champion & Chief Technology Officer of Bite Group.
Jose Cristobal Alonso Martin
What did BITE do?
The project was a complete overhaul of the
mobile network. Base stations, switches,
transmitters, everything was replaced by
new technology from Chinese manufacturer
(and global market leader for this type of
equipment) Huawei. Before taking this de-
cision, scenario’s for network upgrading
were calculated. Using the new Huawei
technology, which was smaller, did not
need air conditioning and had fewer use of
cables, was not only the most efficient so-
lution, but also meant improving the net-
work capabilities.
How does that work exactly?
The technology that was in use was desig-
ned in a different way. Because of that de-
sign, energy was lost through heat genera-
tion, much in the same way as the electri-
city network. Base stations, at the foot of
transmission towers, would send a signal
to a transmitter in the top of that tower.
Much of the energy used in this process
was to get the signal from the bottom to
the top, losing energy underway. The
equipment has the base station next to the
transmitter. On top of that, the new equip-
ment is much smaller. Together, this makes
for a much more efficient use of energy.
The installation of the new technology not
only brought BITE a faster mobile network,
but it also provided a 33% reduction in
energy use for operating the network - ba-
sed on measurements on typical sites.
The installation of the new
technology not only brought
BITE a faster mobile network,
but it also provided a 33%
reduction in energy use for
operating the network.
Why do it?
The main driver for this project was value
creation. Or, simply put, improving network
coverage, speed and quality against a lower
cost of ownership. To be competitive in
both the Lithuanian and the Latvian mobile
telephony market, you need to have attrac-
tive pricing for the service. You can only
achieve that if you can keep your costs as
low as possible. By upgrading the network,
BITE has reduced the cost base, which
leads to lower prices for the customer. On
top of that, the quality of calls was impro-
ved for the customers as well. This enabled
BITE to experience strong growth in the
Latvian market. As an example for that: in
August more than 70% of people that
changed their mobile telephony provider,
became client of BITE.
By upgrading the network,
BITE has reduced the cost
base, which leads to lower
prices for the customer.
What about the environmental
impact?
Obviously, using less energy also means
less emissions and a smaller impact on the
environment. BITE sees that as an additio-
nal benefit. Transparency about motives is
very important. The reason to upgrade the
network was cost reduction to better serve
the customer with attractive pricing. Of
course, BITE is happy that this also leads to
less impact on the environment.
What did BITE learn from this?
Interestingly, market research showed
that in Latvia ‘green’ companies are per-
ceived as having expensive products.
That was another reason BITE did not
want to stress the environmental benefits
of the project and it strengthened the be-
lieve that transparency on motives is key.
A ‘green’ claim for this project would ha-
ve impacted the confidence customers
have in BITE in a negative way, because
in fact it was a cost reduction initiative.
Another lesson learned is that small thin-
gs can really make a difference. Sure,
this project in itself was a huge operation.
But at the same time BITE did some
other things as well. More meetings with
video-conferencing, for example. This
Small things can really
make a difference.
greatly reduced travel costs, and again
has an additional benefit of having less
impact on the environment. Something
that also made a difference, was the
2009 company christmas party. Instead
of organizing it off-site, the party took
place in the office. With a DJ, good music,
good food and drinks, but less costs. The
saved costs were then distributed to
charities, chosen by a selected group of
BITE employees. It was a success in eve-
ry sense: the party was good, employees
were happy and BITE managed to help
some charities doing good for society.
Furthermore, BITE is trying to convince
customers to opt for the e-bill, the elec-
tronic version of the monthly invoice.
Using the e-bill also represents both a
cost reduction and an reduction of the
environmental impact. In Lithuania BITE
is now also piloting the use of wind tur-
bines to power the communication to-
wers. Although projected benefits look
promising, it is not easy to run such pro-
jects in Latvia as well. There are a lot of
administrative hurdles to take, and the
collaboration with local partners is not
progressing as quickly as BITE expected.
But we’ll probably see more of that in the
near future.