Can the telecom industry truly lead the charge in sustainability? Join us for a compelling episode featuring Nisar Ahmad from Capgemini Engineering as he unpacks the powerful intersection between cutting-edge telecom innovations and green practices. With over two decades of experience, Nisar provides an insider’s perspective on how advancements like 5G, autonomous networks, and network virtualization are transforming not just the telecom landscape but also our environmental footprint. Discover how technologies such as network slicing and AI-driven customer experience management are setting new standards for energy efficiency and sustainability.
Nisar doesn't shy away from the critical issues; he delves into the opportunities and hurdles telecom companies face in adopting greener practices. From the pivotal shift toward renewable energy sources like solar and wind to strategic network planning involving network digital twins and AI, the discussion covers the full spectrum of sustainable transformation. Learn how these innovations are reducing greenhouse gas emissions and operational costs while making the industry more competitive. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the future of telecom and its role in creating a sustainable world.
Can the telecom industry truly lead the charge in sustainability? Join us for a compelling episode featuring Nisar Ahmad from Capgemini Engineering as he unpacks the powerful intersection between cutting-edge telecom innovations and green practices. With over two decades of experience, Nisar provides an insider’s perspective on how advancements like 5G, autonomous networks, and network virtualization are transforming not just the telecom landscape but also our environmental footprint. Discover how technologies such as network slicing and AI-driven customer experience management are setting new standards for energy efficiency and sustainability.
Nisar doesn't shy away from the critical issues; he delves into the opportunities and hurdles telecom companies face in adopting greener practices. From the pivotal shift toward renewable energy sources like solar and wind to strategic network planning involving network digital twins and AI, the discussion covers the full spectrum of sustainable transformation. Learn how these innovations are reducing greenhouse gas emissions and operational costs while making the industry more competitive. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the future of telecom and its role in creating a sustainable world.
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Speaker 1:
Hey everybody, happy Friday. Really intriguing guest today from the global tech and innovation powerhouse that is Capgemini Nisar. How are you?
Speaker 2:
Very good, ivan, thank you. Thanks for including me in today's podcast. Thank you today's podcast.
Speaker 1:
Thank you, yeah, thanks for joining, and we go a little ways back in the telecom industry only a few decades. So nice to connect, reconnect with you. Before that, maybe introduce yourself a little bit about your background and Capgemini being such a diverse and interesting multifaceted company. Give us the picture of where you sit and what you do in the organization.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so my name is Nisar Ahmad. I'm part of Capgemini Engineering for more than two decades now. I played multiple roles, started as an engineer. Today, I had six key industries. Telecommunication is one of my core focus areas. I look forward to talking to you.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, likewise, and within that context, talk about the work your mission if you will in telecom. What do you do for the teleco industry and what are some of the challenges you're facing or you're helping your clients face?
Speaker 2:
So telco as an industry has been in the existence and there is a big innovation happening across the ecosystem to the latest 5Gg which has been adopted, uh under monetization, to the next generation, 6g or sixth generation, to newer technologies like autonomous network, to network virtualization. Some of these are core to telco as an industry in terms of technological advances and also the topic of sustainability initiatives which the industry is going through. Capgemini is working across all of this and we would love to talk more about it during our conversation now.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, going green is no longer an option, it's an imperative from the data center to our devices, to sustainability, recycling. What are the different ways telecoms are looking to go green and what are some of the challenges, opportunities, problems they're facing?
Speaker 2:
And you know what are some of the challenges, opportunities. You know problems they're facing. Okay, so let me start with the opportunities and then we can delve into the challenges and how they can adopt to the newer technologies, keeping in mind of both competitive edge and also saving, you know, earth, going green right. So, in terms of opportunities, if I talk of telecom, industry will play a pivotal role in enabling sustainable practices across the entire ecosystem. When I say that they will make use of solutions which will reduce or enhance the energy efficiency, adopt new renewable energy technologies, the new way of network planning or network design to network automation. To start with, if I take the example of implementing newer energy efficient technologies such as 5G, that is, today's adoption to an autonomous network, most of these new technologies, when we talk of all of these, are energy efficient in comparison to their previous generation. There is also a big innovation happening in respect to the network design right, such as the radio access network, the RAN, which is more energy efficient. You might have heard about network slicing as a key technology, advancement to network virtualization All are key in optimizing the energy usage. Now, moving on further, when you talk in terms of such a new technology implementation. It requires the planning, the network planning, to be done, the network operations to be done using, say, a network digital twin for network planning, our usage of AI or machine learning for autonomous network or using AI for customer experience management, right. All of these are key advancements Connecting to the sustainability practices.
Speaker 2:
There is a shift towards going green. When I say going green, there is a transition towards solar or wind sort of technologies which will power the telecom infrastructure, which in turn can reduce the greenhouse gas emissions, right. And it's also core to reducing the operational cost, because today's telco operation requires a humongous cost on energy, from traditional to the new age would attract a little bit of capex in terms of, uh, you know, investing into the solar sort of technologies or wind sort of technologies, but it will contribute significant improvement in the carbon footprint. But do do telcos get, uh, uh, you know, any additional attributes in terms of, you know, energy agreements? Or there are, you know, different self-generation facilities which you know telcos can implement for their commitment towards the clean energy, right. So all of this would give rise to the kind of opportunities in this particular sector. Now, moving on to the challenges which you asked, right.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I mean so many opportunities. It's almost like where do you start within the network? And of course, you have to run the network on a day-to-day and it's hard. Change is hard in general, but specifically when you have so many legacy practices. You've done things always the way you've done them and that requires a lot. So where do you start? I guess is a great question when implementing any new sustainability practice. What are you seeing?
Speaker 2:
So it would be a combination of, say, integrating new technological integrations, looking into both legacy system as well as the new age.
Speaker 2:
You know sustainable systems, right? So when you want to integrate such technologies in a brownfield sort of scenario, right, because today's infrastructure, the telco infrastructure, has both of these elements equally embedded. I would say it is technologically challenging and also require a significant upgrade to the current system as well, right? So if I go a little bit further, when you talk in terms of telco as an infrastructure, we are missing a piece on the data centers. Data centers are the key component of an infrastructure which consumes high consumption of power, and if these data centers are powered by the renewable sources, that would itself result into major reduction in carbon footprint. It also needs to talk in terms of okay, so what kind of cooling systems are used for the data center, sort of scenarios.
Speaker 2:
So it's a combination of the technologies. It's a combination of legacy to the new age, energy efficient systems which are capital intensive and, most importantly, I would say, the adoption right when you are adopting to the modern new technologies. There will be migration challenges and we and the telco industry as such, have to adopt to this ecosystem change and move from the old generation, you know, chassis-based system, to a virtualized. You know networks across or implementing, you know new technologies for, say, field operating system or as simple as electrification, for my truck rolls right, or can I implement technologies which will help reduce my truck rolls for fixing a particular problem on my network. So those are all the challenges and at the same time, I would say these would give rise to the opportunity that, as I mentioned in my previous discussion, yeah, it's a pretty challenging and important picture and the impact can be so great.
Speaker 1:
It's not just telecom, of course. It's across every industry that things like environmental conservation and reducing carbon footprint is important. But in telecom, what role does it play in the big picture economy? And you know, I guess we have an outsized share of impact in telecom, right, because there's so much, for example, data center, so much water power usage and you know, co2 put out through the various infrastructures. But you know, how do you think about telecom versus other sectors?
Speaker 2:
So it is common. I mean the industries are, you know, going through a transformation and every industry, I would say right, as in the case of telco, other industries are also going through similar sort of transformation, data center being core to digitization and the digital technologies getting implemented by every industry. It requires an efficient use or design of a data center from all aspects right. Use or design of a data center from all aspects right From a reusability perspective, from a cooling perspective, as you rightly mentioned, to the power perspective. Can the industries implement, say, a circular economy right in implementing such new systems? Can industries implement a digital economy, for example, the traditional way of billing to today's e-billing right? Or I would go to a level of e-technology or e-sim right, I would go to a level of e-technology or e-sim right, which is kind of reducing the you know kind of landfill for these sort of industries. Have to be relooked into Eventually, the kind of investments each of these industries are making to go towards the net zero or net neutrality that they have to work towards.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, really, really great point, and you mentioned a lot of different technologies that are relevant within your sustainability practice. Maybe you could dive into a few of the top roles they play and you know how you're leveraging them with different customers.
Speaker 2:
Okay, so I can talk of, say, energy efficiency as one of the core practices which I talked about Within energy efficiency if I take 5G solutions, which is around 30 to 35 percent better energy efficient than the previous generations.
Speaker 2:
So when we are implementing such technologies, if I talk about a use case of autonomous network, so when you bring technologies like 5G with autonomous network, you can bring out the network balancing or how the network load is balanced from one area to the other area, based on the requirement, based on the spikes in network traffic. And I would also like to connect that to a data center usage right, because, as we do, use data center usage right, Because, as we do, you know, use significant application usage, there is a network traffic increase and appropriate data center usage. So can I have a network which is real-time, sensitive enough to adopt to the rising demand and appropriately switch from the data center to a different data center where my energy power is reduced, right, or the cost of my energy is lower, so thereby I can connect both the autonomous portion of the network to also the cost of the energy. So you have to think from that perspective and those are the kind of work we are working, the entire ecosystem of telco today.
Speaker 1:
Fantastic and of course you know a lot about the industry is under pressure financially revenue pressure, cost pressure. It's true of every industry but telecom, very competitive in that sense. How do you balance these sustainability goals versus profitability and CapEx, investment and operational expenses and all the things that they are challenged by?
Speaker 2:
So core is operational efficiency, and that's where I was talking about autonomous network which can kind of devise a methodology across the entire network ecosystem in terms of bringing in optimizations across the network. Simple things like, say, can I extend the lifetime of an infrastructure which is energy efficient by a few years? Right, so it can be a quick balance of maintaining profitability, but those lifetime infrastructure which is getting expanded also has to have by virtue of cost reduction. The core is how to bring the operational excellence, operational efficiency, across the ecosystem, and talked about the technological innovations which can bring in the automation part. But at the same time, think about it the moment you add AI, it would also increase the energy cost. It would also increase how one has to be managing the entire end-to-end ecosystem, right, so bring the best balance between the OPEX and CAPEX which will also balance the profitability to be there in achieving sustainability needs.
Speaker 2:
Lastly, about you know, say uh sustainable. You know designs, right, because you're talking in terms of uh how the, how the equipments are designed, how the equipment life cycle has been expanded to, how uh each of these uh systems would guide towards. You know, using the collaboration, like, if I can talk about the examples of say, using a single tower for multiple telco operators can reduce. You know cost for that.
Speaker 1:
Great point, something Europe is doing a lot of not so much here in the US, sadly, but yeah is doing a lot of not so much here in the US, sadly, but yeah. And tell me, uh, you know, a lot of the operators are struggling with all the climate disruption we're seeing storms and hurricanes and flooding and all kinds of challenges due to this crazy climate and weather we're seeing. I think building and resilience is another part of this whole transformation process. You know it's sustainability but also resilience, diversity as well, so it's quite a lot of challenges. I'm curious you know many of us know of Capgemini, but Capgemini Engineering is sort of a new entity. Maybe describe a little bit about your organization and how it helps companies with their transformation efforts? I'd love a peek behind the curtain.
Speaker 2:
So, as you know, capgemini is a global leader in consulting and technology services. I belong to one of the service line called Capgemini Engineering, which is a powerhouse of 60,000 engineers and consultants who know the industry day in and day out. We have been in the industry for the last 40 plus years working on telco as one of the core industries you know. On telco as one of the core, you know industries. We have our own solutions in terms of building these newer technologies connected to 5G and we also help our customers, our fraud companies and also telco operators build newer solutions.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, amazing mission that many of us, even in the industry, were not aware of. So great work. And I guess, on a personal note, what are you looking forward to over the next couple months? I imagine you travel quite a bit, any more events or a little downtime over the summer period?
Speaker 2:
time over the summer period, so it is a bit of a down time considering the school holidays and other things. For maybe another month or so From August onwards we'll be back on the road meeting customers and hosting events for most of our ecosystem partners.
Speaker 1:
Fantastic. Well, I'll be out there as well. Particular Mobile World Congress in Las Vegas is a big industry event, of course, the big one in Barcelona, so I hope to see you and your team out there. Thanks for joining and sharing a little bit of your insights into this real industry challenge.
Speaker 2:
Thanks, Ivan, and have a good rest of the day.
Speaker 1:
Thanks, thanks everyone, thanks for watching. Take care, bye-bye.
