[wsfii-discuss] Cheap and green: biofuels for mobile phone networks

Mon Feb 19 13:23:56 UTC 2007

*Cheap and green: biofuels for mobile phone networks
http://www.scidev.net/news/index.cfm?fuseaction=printarticle&itemid=3421&language=1 

*Biofuels could soon be powering mobile phone networks

Abiose Adelaja
16 February 2007
Source: SciDev.Net

Mobile phone companies in Nigeria and India aim to boost rural 
development and expand their mobile networks by using biofuels as a 
cheap and green way to power networks.

Access to electricity in rural areas is typically poor. By producing 
biofuel energy from organic matter, rural communities could sell it to 
the mobile phone companies, powering base stations that receive and 
transmit wireless signals.

Two pilot schemes are currently underway in Lagos, Nigeria and Pune, 
India, to try powering GSM networks with biofuels. GSM is a digital 
standard for mobile phones used by more than two billion people worldwide.

The schemes are receiving sponsorship from the GSM Association 
Development Fund and mobile phone company Ericsson. Local providers MTN 
— Nigeria's largest mobile phone provider — and Idea Cellular in India 
are also involved.

"Apart from our desire to expand our coverage, biofuel produces economic 
empowerment, because lack of connectivity is directly related to 
economic impoverishment," said Prashanth Donepudi, project manager of 
the GSM Association Development Fund in Nigeria.

In Lagos, soy oil biodiesel is being used to power a suburban base 
station owned by MTN in a six-month trial. The study in Pune will use 
cotton and the hedge plant jatropha, according to a BBC report.

"We are trying biofuels because we feel it will save us the operational 
cost of reaching rural areas," said Victor Oduguwa, who heads MTN's 
Design and Value Engineering section

He said biofuels also offered a form of "social responsibility" because 
the people are economically empowered in the process.

Using renewable energy for mobile networks is not a new concept to 
Africa. Namibia will soon be the first country in the world to power 
mobile networks using wind and solar energy.

The base, owned by mobile phone company MTC Namibia, will serve 1,500 
villagers, reported the BBC.

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