OnRelay Picks the Green Fight

Not to be confused with purple minutes, mobile PBX innovator OnRelay joins other telecommunications vendors reaching for the big green energy-savings stick.

Research conducted by OnRelay has found that the 25 million IP desktop handsets projected to be purchased in 2008 will consume 1.6 billion Watts of power--or more power than the needs of Oxford and Cambridge, England combined.  An earlier study found that IP desk phones sold in 2008 will generate 47 million kilograms of ewaste.

Replacing the majority of those IP desk phones with mobile phones (maybe a cool 3G Apple iPhone?) should result in a 74 percent savings in power costs. Less switches, less PoE gear, less power. Moving to mobile phones shouldn't increase the total amount of energy consumed because everyone already carries around at least one mobile device. OnRelay is happy to point out that businesses can save more energy and expense for the corporate bottom line, because its MBX solution can virtually map the office PBX functionality to a personal phone; no BlackBerry or PDA involved.

Other telecommunications companies have also been preaching the virtues of green. With the price of gasoline above $4, it's hard not to consider telecommuting as an option. Citel has pitched their legacy-phone-to-IP PBX box as being a more eco-friendly solution than ripping out old handsets and cabling to install new Cat-5 and more expensive IP phones. At InterOp, Nortel was beating Cisco over the head with its Energy Tax campaign, noting their switches consume 50 percent less power.

For more:
- OnRelay's Green Mobile PBX [1] pitch

Related articles:
Green is the new black [2] (in Telco)
BT aims to show corporate customers green path [3]
The Nortel Energy [4] and Charm Offensives