Thomson Video Networks has 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 ICT industry.
Thomson Video Networks will lead the consortium, which will focus on creating an 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 is part 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.
The CONVINcE project addresses a 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 standardisation bodies. It is hoped that the project will help deliver new products and services that are designed at the outset with aggressive power-reduction objectives.
