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Sustainable Development: A Study on Approach towards Sustainable Telecommunications in India


Sachin Sharma and Dr. Priyanka Verma
Abstract

Environment is the most basic and important asset for the existence of a human system. It is the responsibility of present generation to protect environment for future generations. The first formal definition of sustainable development came in 1987 from the conclusion report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) according to which “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. Carbon footprint is the term use for measure the contribution of an organisation for emission of Green House Gas (GHG). Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has become the necessity for development of society and modern life. However at present the contribution of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for global carbon footprint is low as compared to other sectors like energy, transportation and construction. India is the fastest growing country as far as telecom in concerned. As per Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) report for telecom subscribers as on August 2018, there are 1189.08millions telecom subscribes in India. There is the need of energy for the operation of telecom equipments. Nothing comes free of cost, the increasing telecom density has raised the demand of energy which results more n more emission of Green House Gas which causes globe warming and increase level of CO2. Thus it becomes important to understand the importance & status of Green Telecom. There is a lot of talk about the issue of sustainability but now the time has come for move ahead from communication of sustainability towards actual development of mechanisms and facilities for sustainability. Telecom Industry consists of different technology (Fixed access, Mobile access), different areas of operation (rural, urban) and there are different elements of network (radio access network, core network etc). This paper develops the understanding about the different factors of telecom, contributing in carbon footprint. This study reveals the concept of green telecom in the perception of different telecom players concludes Government regulatory bodies, telecom service provider and customer. This study is based on secondary data collected from various previous research papers on the subject, data available on web sites on regulatory bodies & Telecom Service Providers (TSPs). This study reveals that there is a need to examine the every aspect of telecom in view of achieving green telecom stage. There is a lot of scope of improvement in Demand Management (Reducing Consumption), Supply Management (increase efficiency of the power sources) and Renewable Energy adoption, as far as energy in telecom sector is concerned.

Volume 11 | 11-Special Issue

Pages: 485-492

DOI: 10.5373/JARDCS/V11SP11/20193057