Tech Stream
Archive for the ‘ Environment’ Category
Greener mobile networks in Vanuatu
27 February 2009
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There were some new eco-friendly phones on display at the Mobile World Congress last week, including Samsung’s Blue Earth – a solar powered touchscreen phone made of recycled water bottles, if you can believe it.
And mobile carrier Digicel unveiled their ZTE Coral 200 Eco Phone. It also features a solar panel on the back, so you can charge it up when the battery gets low. It should be available in some parts of the world by June.
Besides the environmental benefits of these phones, they also allow those with no access to a mains power grid, which is about 2 billion people worldwide, to have access to a mobile phone. And these off-grid folks are generally in remote or underdeveloped areas.
Digicel are a telecommunications company based in jamaica, but they’ve been making inroads into the Pacific for some time now, and are using renewable energy sources to power the more remote areas of their mobile phone network.
In Vanuatu they’ve just switched 25 of their base stations from diesel generators to solar and wind power. Digicel Vanuatu’s Chief Technical Officer Douglas Creevey told me this means almost a third of their network will be powered by renewable energy.
