China Mobile proposed to centralize the baseband processing in a manner similar to data storage facilities for the internet. If more base stations are deployed, the 30 percent of site rent scales accordingly, making it unattractive to simply deploy more base stations (this could become a problem for 5G FR2 with reduced cell sizes compared to 5G FR1).įrom the analysis of the power consumption, it is clear that most of the costs are due to the distributed and remote deployment of air conditioning for the baseband processing portion of a base station. The actual transmission of energy is only 7 percent of the OPEX. Most of the electricity is for the operation of the remotely distributed air conditioning network used to cool the baseband processors (radio units are typically air-cooled and do not require additional air conditioning). Similarly, in terms of recurring OPEX, electricity is almost 50 percent of the costs. 1-2 In terms of the initial CAPEX, the air conditioning is over 50 percent, leaving the remaining for the base station equipment. Most of the cost of setting up and operating a cellular network is in the remote provision of air conditioning and site rental for the base stations. HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO RUN A CELLULAR NETWORK?Īlthough the base stations have become more energy efficient from 2G to 4G, the costs of providing more capacity through network densification have increased significantly (see Figure 2).
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