Towards an energy rating system for telecommunications

The Internet can provide many opportunities to improve the sustainability of society. However, it also has potentially adverse environmental impacts in terms of energy consumption. To address these negative impacts a new energy rating system for the telecommunications sector is being developed. The new rating system will serve as a systematic framework for assessing, reporting and benchmarking the sustainability of telecom products and services. In this paper, we discuss the ecosystem of the new rating system and methodologies for computing a telecom service's green index rating. Further, we use real network measurements obtained from a research and education network to demonstrate how the green service index rating of a telecom service can be calculated. © 2012 Swinburne University of Technology.