All research

The latest GSMA consumer survey asked more than 10,000 consumers about their views on smartphone repairability, reuse and recycling, refurbished smartphones and the importance of sustainability when buying a new mobile phone. The survey findings have important implications for operators, mobile phone OEMs and other mobile ecosystem players in terms of positioning, potential sales benefits and the wider promotion of circularity schemes.

Having been under significant pressure for the last few years, sales of smartphones are recovering. Against this backdrop, understanding how consumer behaviour with devices is changing (and why) is crucial to prepare for the next phase of device innovation and growth.

The complexity of reorienting network strategy around sustainability means a clear framework is key for prioritising when and where actions should be taken. This report outlines such a framework, offering telecoms operators and their suppliers a 'true north' to guide decision-making.

Solutions and policy remedies to the challenge of decarbonisation are urgent considering the timelines and milestones ahead for net zero. This research presents the state of play and outlook for renewables. It outlines the long-term benefits to decarbonisation that such an energy transition offers.

The economics of rolling out telecoms networks in rural areas have long proved challenging. The difficulties centre on running a high fixed cost business against a lower revenue base. To examine the state and outlook for energy use among African telecoms operators, GSMA Intelligence ran a data gathering exercise involving most of the largest telecoms operators in the region.

The global market for pre-owned, refurbished mobiles is growing significantly. The latest GSMA Intelligence consumer survey asked users about their intentions, including whether they would consider purchasing refurbished smartphones, the reasons for doing so, and their expectations for price discounts. The survey findings have important implications for operators, smartphone OEMs and other ecosystem players.

While virtual power plants are nascent, there is growing interest from telecoms operators and their vendor suppliers, with a potential win-win in terms of sustainability and P&L. This analysis focuses on the financial incentive behind virtual power plants.

An emerging area of focus for net zero is energy production and its supply to the power grid. Virtual power plants offer mobile operators opportunities for more stable power capacity, more efficient use of renewables, and a revenue stream from frequency balancing and power sales.

Sustained cost pressures and commitments to net zero have made energy efficiency a strategic priority for telecoms operators. Partnering with a global set of mobile operators, GSMA Intelligence leveraged its independent position and analytical capabilities to launch its Mobile Energy Efficiency Benchmarking project in 2020. The benchmark is based on fully anonymised, real-world data inputs, with a goal of quantifying network energy consumption, efficiency levels and fuel sources. 2023 was the third year of tracking energy efficiency by GSMA Intelligence.

New chipset designs must be made with sustainability as a bedrock principle. This report examines the rationale and urgency behind the sustainability push, how compute efficiencies translate into energy reductions, and how competitive activity is set to accelerate among chipset designers and producers to improve power efficiency.

The huge rise in mobile data traffic forecast over the remainder of the decade means both edge and cloud compute will have to handle higher capacity loads. How best to increase the energy efficiency of those parts of the network? How far along are technical innovations in the edge and cloud compared to the radio network?

With stakeholders becoming increasingly informed and discerning in their assessment of sustainability claims, the need for a robust and consistent approach to measuring and communicating sustainability performance has reached a new level of importance.

The huge rise in mobile data traffic forecast over the remainder of the decade means both edge and cloud compute will have to handle higher capacity loads. However, deciding when and where to use each should factor in energy use. How should this be done?

Operator strategies continue to evolve in the digital era as the telecoms industry seeks to capture new growth opportunities in the consumer and enterprise markets. Assessing innovation and achievements is more important than ever before. GSMA Intelligence's operator case studies provide a concise and consistent way to shine a light on and analyse operators' strategies and business models, as well as how they are launching new services. In this edition, we highlight how Orange Group sees its Re initiative as an important measure in helping bolster its sustainability credentials.

This follow-up report to "5G energy efficiencies: green is the new black" establishes the context and rationale for improving energy efficiency among operators and their supply chain. This comes as 5G enters a new phase, with 5G adoption reaching more than 15% from almost nothing three years ago.

Open RAN is a network strategy with growing appeal, but still only adopted by a small proportion of operators and mostly on a small scale. Despite this, there is a surprisingly strong vote of confidence in open RAN's power efficiency. Little has been reported in the way of actual results, so is this confidence justified?

This report is the final of a three-part series on the technological and business implications of sustainability in the telecoms industry. The focus of this report is reputation and external relations, and how perceptions among all touchpoints for telecoms operators are realigning towards a green set of priorities.

To succeed in making sustainability a key strength in product marketing, the various vendors of networks, cloud, IT, IoT and security solutions, including operators, need to help enterprises to make smart business decisions that simultaneously have a positive impact from a sustainability perspective. To achieve this, a set of guiding principles is essential, which we provide in this report.

How will rising enterprise data traffic and workloads affect overall energy usage and efficiency? And what can operators, vendors and others do to mitigate energy consumption? To answer these questions, GSMA Intelligence surveyed 100 operators and developed a model to simulate the impact of changing enterprise traffic flows across a range of industries.

This report serves as part of a broader research partnership with Arm to understand how best to decarbonise compute, how this can be achieved and why this matters for the ICT industry.

Underpinning the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is a shared promise by every country to work together to secure the rights and wellbeing of everyone on a healthy, thriving planet. However, at the halfway point on the way to 2030, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are in deep trouble. This report demonstrates the mobile industry's continued commitment to the goals, and identifies areas where the industry needs to improve or accelerate its actions to achieve the 2030 Agenda.

This is the second of a three-part series from GSMA Intelligence on the technological and business implications of sustainability in the telecoms industry. The research aims to give an evidence-based view of why going green makes business sense, and how this can be done effectively. The series comprises three reports covering: overall rationale and outlook; the financial case; and the reputational and external relations case.

Efficient use of spectrum can lead to a reduction in carbon emissions while simultaneously generating economic benefits to society. This latest report examines the impact of four spectrum policy aspects that can vary between countries.

Sustained cost pressures and commitments to net zero in support of the 2015 Paris Agreement have made energy efficiency a strategic priority for many telecoms operators around the world. This is compounded by data traffic rises associated with LTE and 5G migration. To help provide an evidence base for measuring progress, we partnered with a group of operators to develop a Mobile Energy Efficiency Benchmarking tool. The tool is based on real-world data inputs from operators on a fully anonymised basis to quantify network energy consumption and efficiency levels, and fuel sources.

This report is the first of a three-part series on the technological and business implications of sustainability in the telecoms industry. The analysis presents an evidence-based view of why going green makes business sense, and how this can be done effectively as part of sustainable digital transformation. GSMA Intelligence commissioned new global consumer and enterprise surveys to complement its own data analysis. The research covers the financial and reputational case for going green beyond the fundamental environmental urgency.

Operator strategies continue to evolve in the digital era as the telecoms industry seeks to capture new growth opportunities in the consumer and enterprise markets. Assessing innovation and achievements is more important than ever before. GSMA Intelligence's operator case studies provide a concise and consistent way to shine a light on and analyse operators' strategies and business models, as well as how they are launching new services. In this edition, we explore the growth in sustainability as a priority for operators and consumers, and Vodafone's role in this.

This report is the second in a two-part series from GSMA Intelligence in partnership with Microsoft on the sustainable design and operation of telecoms networks in the 5G era. It explores the energy implications of a broad shift in computing workloads to the cloud and, in the context of enterprise digitisation, edge computing using both 5G and localised datacentres.