GreenTouch Takes Next Step Forward; Opens for General Membership

Accelerates drive towards 1000-fold improvement in network energy efficiency

MURRAY HILL, NJ - The GreenTouchtm consortium, today announced it is opening its doors to individuals and organizations across the industry and inviting them to join other service providers, research institutions, equipment vendors, and universities in revolutionizing communications networks and making them dramatically more energy efficient.

GreenTouch is shaping a vision for the sustainable future of the industry and for society by creating the technologies needed to make communications networks 1000 times more energy efficient than they are today. The consortium is looking for members to contribute to this vision and make it a reality.

Those interested in becoming members of GreenTouch are invited to complete and sign both the Membership Application and Non-Disclosure Agreement available on the consortium website www.greentouch.org and send to contact@greentouch.org.

GreenTouch members will benefit from collaboration with leading experts from around the world, work on the application of fundamental research in exciting new areas and turn innovative ideas about sustainable networks into breakthrough technologies.

Members are also invited to participate in a general consortium meeting that will take place in London, England from 15-17 June. The meeting will cover a broad range of activities and initiatives and offer members the opportunity to discuss emerging technologies and technical models, review new project proposals and take a leadership role in the formation of committees and workgroups.

Establishing membership conditions and formally opening the consortium to membership is the latest in a series of milestones GreenTouch has achieved since its inception in January 2010. Following its stated plan, the consortium has put in place the fundamental building blocks necessary to sustain a viable and successful organization: defined an organizational structure with executive board, determined intellectual property rights, set out operating principles, and established technical objectives.

The technical objectives relate to measuring, modeling, and predicting energy consumption in communications networks as well as gauging the effect of GreenTouch innovations on carbon footprint and network power. A technical committee has been formed to define the network architecture, set technical goals and targets, and coordinate the activities of workgroups focused on specific technology areas such as wireless and fixed access, core transmission and switching and routing technologies.

GreenTouch consortium founders include:

* Service Providers: AT&T, China Mobile, Orange, Portugal Telecom, Swisscom, Telefonica
* Academic Research Labs: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Research Laboratory for Electronics (RLE), Stanford University’s Wireless Systems Lab (WSL), the University of Melbourne’s Institute for a Broadband-Enabled Society (IBES)
* Government and Nonprofit Research Institutions: The CEA-LETI Applied Research Institute for Microelectronics, imec, The French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control (INRIA), Foundation for Mobile Communications
* Industrial Labs: Bell Labs, Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT), Huawei, Freescale Semiconductor


About the GreenTouch Initiative

GreenTouch Initiative is a consortium of leading industry players, research institutions and non-governmental organizations working together to define the challenge, identify solutions and develop solutions with the goal to deliver within five years the architecture, specifications, roadmap, and demonstrations of key components needed to increase ICT network energy efficiency by a factor of 1,000 from current level. www.greentouch.org.