My colleague, ISP Planet's Alex Goldman, attended this year's Freedom to Connect (F2C) conference where the spotlight swung squarely onto the industry's green efforts.  In the last post, he covered a talk by Verizon's vice president for public policy and corporate responsibility, Kathy Brown's talk.

This time, BT Americas' Kevin Moss and Cisco's Bas Boorsma took the stage.  They shed some light on how their companies are cutting carbon output, and in Cisco's case, helping workers slash travel time, expense and pollution.

Cisco at F2C: Broadband is the Fourth Utility
by Alex Goldman

(Click here for Part 1)

At Freedom to Connect's Carbon Negative Internet session, Kevin Moss, corporate social responsibility officer for BT Americas took the podium, which had been recently vacated by Verizon's vice president for public policy and corporate responsibility, Kathy Brown. The first image in his slide deck was that of an iconic British phone box half under water.

He admitted that BT is responsible for 0.7 percent of UK energy consumption.

Addressing that involves complex measures and simple ones. One of the simplest measures is hanging plastic transparent curtains in data centers near the servers. BT cools a portion of its data centers rather than their entire cubic area, thus saving energy, he claimed. In other cases, it works with manufacturers to raise the operating temperature of the equipment.

In the "more complex" category is a recent solar deployment over a parking lot. "We [completed] this solar installation just two weeks ago. It's near our head office in El Segundo. It provides 500 kw."

As to the big picture, BT funded a study on the benefit and harm of broadband. Economically and socially, the picture was all good. Nonetheless, broadband does have negative effects on the environment. For example, it enables people to run more equipment more of the time in their homes.

Broadband is usually described as "always on" but does it really need to always be on? "It needs to be always available."

Bas Boorsma was the final speaker in the first session. He is part of Cisco's Connected Urban Development (CUD) initiative.

"Broadband is the fourth utility," he said. CUD is a five-year commitment under the Clinton Global Intiative, starting in three founding cities: San Francisco, Amsterdam, and Seoul. Boorsman is from Amsterdam.

Each city, he said, is an IT capital and is ready to work with Cisco in a private-public partnership.

In order to encourage people to work from home, Cisco is building "smart centers" close to where people live, in the suburbs. Each smart center offers video conferencing, telepresence, meeting space, banking, IT support, notary, legal, and even child day care and catering services.

Cisco itself has 190 telepresence facilities worldwide, he said, providing $75 million in savings through travel avoided. Each facility has 20 Mbps symmetrical service.

Boorsman said that broadband and symmetrical service are essential for the CUD initiative.

As to saving the environment, "Can we get it done in time? There's no way to know now. But we're optimistic."