Telecommuting future
[ The University of Melbourne Voice Vol. 5, No. 3
8 June - 12 July 2009 ]
Superfast broadband will transform the way we work and offers great environmental benefits. By Shane Cahill.
Picture an airline terminal anywhere in the developed world. It is 7am. There they are in their thousands – expectant holidaymakers, world-weary backpackers, eager first timers. All the usual suspects.
Minus one – the commuter business class. Barely a suit in sight and no sign of Qantas Club members. No laptops on knees, spreadsheets unravelled or urgent barked mobile conversations.
If Laureate Professor and Director of the ARC Special Research Centre for Ultra-Broadband Information Networks (CUBIN) Rod Tucker has his way, in the next decade the notion of flying to another city for a business meeting with a same day return will be recalled as another example of discarded 20th century excess and madness.
“The new fibre to the premises (FTTP) superfast broadband network will transform broadband in Australia,” says Professor Tucker.
“It will have a huge social impact and produce profound cultural changes. There will be a new set of ways people do things from business to community activities to travel.”
FTTP will deliver broadband services via optical fibre to 90 per cent of Australian homes, schools and workplaces at speeds of 100 megabits per second – 100 times faster than services currently used by most people.
People living in more remote parts of Australia will have access to broadband of 12 megabits per second delivered by next generation wireless and satellite technologies.
“Really effective telecommuting will definitely happen and it will replace a significant portion of current business travel,” says Professor Tucker.
“Rather than flying to Sydney and back in a day at a cost of a thousand dollars and a tonne of CO2, business will be done using very high definition video conferencing.”
The energy savings of telecommuting over travel are as impressive as they are undeniable.
While a return flight from Melbourne to Sydney for a business meeting produces 500kg of CO2 emissions per person each way, six hours of video conferencing between the two cities produces only 5kg of CO2 emissions per person.
According to Professor Tucker the new broadband will deliver an ‘in the room’ simulation.
“Put it this way, for example if the conference is about negotiations, the very high definition video will produce an immersive environment where you can follow eye movements and even see who is sweating.”
Beneath the changes to long-held patterns of behaviour that the new broadband will usher in lies the opportunity for unprecedented opportunities for energy savings.
To achieve this goal, the growth of electricity used by the internet – expected to rise from 0.5 per cent to 1.0 per cent of the national total in 2020 – has to be slowed.
First priority is to prevent ‘energy bottlenecks’ occurring in providing the electricity needed to power the equipment used by the internet.
The internet has rapidly evolved from its initial simple functions to now encompass e-commerce, banking and a wide range of information activities containing increasingly complex image and multimedia content.
This functionality is delivered by specialised equipment housed in large facilities using large amounts of energy to provide information to users scattered around the globe. Energy use by these data centres is 1.0 per cent of the global total and doubled between 2000 and 2006.
“It is essential we make the best use of renewable energy by locating computing and storage resources near sources of renewable energy,” Professor Tucker says.
“And if we are going to move data to follow the sun and the winds we will have to greatly expand data transport capacity and find efficiency trade-offs.”
At the same time replacement of high energy activities such as much business travel by efficient internet use can significantly reduce carbon emissions.
“There is potential for enormous carbon emissions savings with appropriate use of the internet to replace existing business, community and leisure activities,” says Tucker.
“The internet and associated ICT must work efficiently to ensure these opportunities are achieved.”
However, energy savings are not all one way in favour of the internet. If the internet’s capacity to deliver information virtually instantaneously is not critical, airmailing data on high-capacity USB memory sticks uses less energy than sending the data over the internet.
And what about the environmental cost of spam?
McAfee, the antivirus software company recently did a study of the environmental effect of spam emails. Based on work carried out by Professor Tucker’s group, McAfee calculated that globally, annual spam energy use totals 33 billion kilowatt-hours. The greenhouse impact of these spam emails is the same as the greenhouse impact of three million passenger cars.
To ensure this mix of next generation efficiencies and large-scale savings is transferred into benefits for society, Professor Tucker is developing a new research institute – the Institute for a Broadband Enabled Society.
“The institute will focus on new applications of broadband, including remote and distance medicine and distance education. Widespread usage of broadband in rural and remote areas will be as great an advance as when radio first allowed the School of the Air to be brought to children in remote areas of Australia,” Professor Tucker says.
The new National Broadband Network will also take Australia from lagging in internet technology to world leadership with enormous resultant commercial opportunities.
“Australia will be the first western country to have universal broadband and will be one of the lead nations in the field after having been backward for so long. Australia will be up there with world leaders South Korea and Japan.
“There are great opportunities for Australian businesses to develop and export applications and services. Australia has the potential to be the world leader in broadband products for other western nations, while there will be an enormous boost for research.”
But will it all end up on our mobiles?
According to Professor Tucker, most unlikely.
“Mobile use of conferencing will grow, but only for voice and one person video conferencing,” says Tucker.
So while the day in Sydney might be on the way out, a bigger and better large screen office theatre is on the way in.
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