Thomson Video Coordinating Carbon Footprint Effort

Thomson Video Networks today announced the launch of the CONVINcE project, a consortium of 18 partners in five European countries that will address the challenges of reducing the carbon footprint of the information, communications, and technology (ICT) industry.

Thomson Video Networks will lead the consortium, whose immediate focus will be on creating an end-to-end approach for reducing the power consumption in IP-based video networks — from the headend where content is encoded and streamed to the devices at which it is consumed, also considering the core and access networks.

With participants from France, Finland, Romania, Sweden and Turkey, the 30-month CONVINcE project was launched in September. CONVINcE is a project of the Eureka/Celtic-Plus research initiative for telecommunications and new media and is endorsed by the French “Images & Réseaux” research cluster. 

“By 2020, the Internet’s carbon footprint is forecast to double that of air travel. Since Internet traffic is increasingly driven by video, we must concentrate on IP-based video delivery networks in order to reduce the ICT footprint,” said Claude Perron, chief technology officer at Thomson Video Networks. “Reducing their energy consumption is a growing concern for our customers as well. By coordinating the CONVINcE initiative, Thomson Video Networks is anticipating customer requirements as well as the European directives on eco-design for energy-related products.” 

The CONVINcE project addresses a wide range of technology topics for IP video delivery including encoding/transcoding, core/metro networks, access networks such as 4G and 5G, content delivery networks, routing protocols, software-defined networks, and delivery platforms.

CONVINcE also proposes software best practices, eco-design, power measurements, and quality of experience measurements designed to foster an end-to-end approach to reducing power consumption.

CONVINcE members will publish results of the project obtained through targeted testing that demonstrates best practices, and will also provide the results to standardization bodies. The desired business impact of the project is to deliver new products and services that are designed at the outset with aggressive power-reduction objectives.

The CONVINcE initiative is consistent with Thomson Video Networks’ recently adopted environmental policy. In accordance with ISO 14001 standard requirements, the policy focuses on activities with the highest environmental impact, including waste management, energy consumption, new product introduction, and transport of products. 

“The ‘Behind Every Screen‘ approach to video infrastructure, presented by Thomson Video Networks at IBC 2014, is an excellent example of an initiative that minimizes energy consumption in the headend,” Perron added. “By combining both on-premises and cloud-based resources, Behind Every Screen allows customers to dedicate power-optimized hardware to 24/7 channels while dynamically allocating additional resources anytime they’re needed to absorb peaks in activity.”