Wireless Networks Cut Carbon (And Costs)

The growth in use of laptops by employees, invariably equipped with Wi-Fi, means that it’s likely that many or most employees not only can, but if given the opportunity, will connect wirelessly to the network. At Microsoft, 72 percent of employees work wirelessly every day, and 70 percent believe working wirelessly saves them five or more hours a week in productivity.

2. Use wireless to cut costs
Deploy or extend wireless networks to cut both capital costs and ongoing costs of unnecessary wired connections

Provisioning wireless, ideally the much more reliable and higher speed wireless of 802.11n, cuts both capital costs incurred during deployment or refurbishment of network infrastructures, and invariably cuts annual operational costs to such a degree that the new wireless network pays for itself within 9-18 months.

Swedish construction company NCC has steadily been equipping its new offices with wireless, and saving money all the way along; “From £2000 for our smallest locations (and we have hundreds of them), to £20,000 for an office of 180-200 employees, we save some 50 percent on our networking costs every time we set up an office,” explains Anders Eklind, network manager at NCC. “We used to pull 3 cables per user/desk position, and now it’s just an average of 1.5.”

Supporting both voice and data over wireless offers organisations the opportunity to cut the number of wired ports (cable pulls), per user from an average of 3.5-4.4 ports per user to an average closer to 2 ports per user (including all common areas, printers, faxes etc). The benefits from such a reduction accrue in terms of capital expenditure (not having to buy so much cable or so many switched ports); operational expenditure (greatly reducing the “moves-adds-changes” budget and cutting the number of ports covered by relatively expensive vendor maintenance fees); and cutting electrical consumption (and consequently air conditioning requirements and overall carbon footprint).