Telco update: Suriname uses solar, Telstra gets fuel cell
It’s all green of late with the telcos. The past 24 hours has seen a hub of activity from Ericsson and Telstra.
First, Digicel and Ericsson have teamed up to place a solar powered GSM base station in a remote area of Surniname, increasing the network coverage to South America’s smallest country. Whilst it’s been built primarily for revenue building rather than reducing the footprint of Digicel it does work exclusively on solar and, Ericsson claims, is the first time such technology has been deployed on the continent.
More impressively, however, the Australian mobile carrier Telstra’s Melbourne based head office has installed a hydrogen fuel cell test facility.
According to the Australian blog Now We Are Talking it the first installation of its kind at an Australian corporate headquarters.
More from the blog:
The hydrogen fuel cell is part of Telstra’s Renewable Energy Installation which includes:
- One 5 kilowatt hydrogen fuel cell unit with 6 x 50 litre hydrogen cylinders that could provide 12 hours of continuous 5 kilo watt back up power for five Intelligent Service Access Manager (ISAM) cabinets – currently used as the access platform in the Telstra Next IP™ network.
- 12 high-powered 175 watt solar panels, generating enough energy per year to power 30 standard compact fluorescent lights continuously for one year.
