SCIENCE

Consortium Moves Forward Toward Delivering on Energy Efficiency Objectives 

GreenTouch (http://www.greentouch.org/) today announced that 18 new organizations from across the telecommunications and energy sectors have joined the consortium.  The addition of these new members – equipment vendors, service providers, research institutions, and universities – will serve to sustain the momentum GreenTouch has generated since its launch in January 2010 and play a critical role in enabling the consortium to achieve the ambitious goal it has set – demonstrating the enabling technologies that will achieve 1000 fold improvement in the energy efficiency of today’s ICT networks. 

Since its debut GreenTouch has already achieved a number of key milestones and has been widely recognized for its vision and its accomplishments.  The consortium has established a governing board, defined concrete research targets and baseline reference network models, and organized workgroups that have initiated research programs.  An initial demonstration of enabling technology is planned for early 2011.  

In June, GreenTouch received an award for energy efficiency innovation at the Global Telecoms Business Innovation Awards event.  Awareness of the consortium's vision and activities has spread as a result of presentations to audiences ranging from senior EU leadership in Belgium to the TEDGlobal2010 conference in Oxford, England and the ECOC 2010 conference in Turin, Italy. 

The new members, representing 11 countries and four continents, include: 

Athens Information Technology (AIT) Center for Research & Education -- Greece

Columbia University -- United States

Draka Communications –- The Netherlands

Dublin City University -- Ireland

Electronics and Telecommunication Research Institute (ETRI) -- Korea

Emerson Network Power, Energy Systems, North America, Inc. –- United States

Fondazione Politecnico di Milano -- Italy

Interdisciplinary Institute for Broadband Technology (IBBT vzw) -- Belgium

KT Corporation -- Korea

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology -- Germany

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (K.U. Leuven) -- Belgium

King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology -- Saudi Arabia

Seoul National University -- Korea

University of Cambridge –- United Kingdom

University of Leeds –- United Kingdom

University of Maryland –- United States

University of New South Wales -- Australia

Waterford Institute of Technology -- Ireland

"We at GreenTouch are pleased that this diverse group of organizations is confirming the value of our work and joining our membership," said Gee Rittenhouse, Chairman of GreenTouch and Vice President of Research at Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs. "We welcome their expertise and participation as we work together to achieve our ambitious goals." 

GreenTouch serves as a platform for open collaboration that enables its members to make best use of their expertise and pioneer technologies on which energy-efficient networks of the future will depend.  Members include leading experts from around the world who benefit from collaboration on the application of fundamental research to exciting new areas, the transformation of innovative ideas about sustainable networks into breakthrough technologies.