The Asia Pacific (APAC) region has some of the most substantial mobile phone and 5G uptake rates seen around the globe. According to Statista, in APAC the smartphone adoption rate was 76% in 2022, set to rise above 90% by 2030. The global mobile telecoms lobby GSMA predicts 5G will represent 41% of mobile connections in APAC by 2030.
This massive increase in demand and usage means telco operators in the region are under ever greater pressure. The data flowing through the networks is, and will continue to, increase at an exponential rate, while sustainability efforts and the race to net zero offer the backdrop we all must work towards.
Meanwhile data is increasingly migrating to the edge. From South Korea to mainland China, telco providers are attempting to bring ultra-low latency and high scalability solutions close to where the data is being generated, often in remote locations.
Nathan Blom, Chief Commercial Officer at Iceotope, believes the challenges the telecom sector faces can be boiled down to three fundamental areas: power constraints, increased density, and rising costs. One solution that may be able to help with all three, he believes, is liquid cooling technology.
The challenges
Power availability and security are key constraints facing the sector in many countries across Asia. Practical concerns regarding the infrastructure availability, or the reluctance and inability to divert power from other essential activities, meet the overall growth in demand and data usage at the extreme edge.
More data processing and computational power requirements will only increase these pressures further, with power consumption at risk of becoming a significant bottleneck. Innovative solutions will be needed to improve energy efficiency.
Telco operators are also facing the challenge of having to increase the number of towers, while at the same time having to upgrade the capacity of those towers. By both increasing the number of nodes and having to boost the computational power at each, power requirements are strained even further.
Finally, increased density brings with it a heightened service cost per site. Combined with increased operational expenditure (OPEX) for service and maintenance – greatly exacerbated when located at the extreme edge – robust and easily serviceable solutions are becoming a financial necessity.
A good liquid cooling solution, such as those offered by Iceotope, can help address all these concerns.
Liquid cooling – one solution to a three-pronged problem
Liquid cooling, as the name would suggest, uses dielectric fluids to help dissipate the heat generated by servers. Traditional air-cooling methods – effectively industrial scale air conditioning – are able to take advantage of natural cold air in cooler climates, and so in some cases can be efficient. However, in the warmer, tropical environments, such as those found across APAC, the cost and energy usage of air cooling rises rapidly. Here liquid cooling comes into its own.
One of the solutions offered by Iceotope – their Precision Liquid Cooling technology – seems perfectly suited to work within the challenging situational framework facing telco operators.
The company’s KUL RAN product, for example, is designed to operate in areas where power availability may be limited. What’s more, by precisely delivering dielectric fluid to remove almost 100% of the heat generated by the components in a server, it reduces water consumption (in some cases close to zero).
In addition, the solution cuts energy consumption by up to 40%, which means not just reduced costs at a time when demand is growing, but lower carbon emissions and greater energy efficiency – all helping the operators sustainability efforts.
The product also has low-touch maintenance requirements. Having no fan, stress on chassis components is reduced, cutting component failures by 30% according to Blom. Servers can be hot swapped at both the data center and at remote locations.
The technology cuts down on space requirements for a given IT load, and operating within standard rack-based chassis, the solution is highly scalable – telco operators are able to expand capacity from a single node to a full rack effortlessly.
Innovative solutions are the only way forward
The telco industry is arguably on the cusp of a game-changing era. The world demands more – more data, more connectivity, more speed. It demands all this, while every sustainability and energy efficiency effort is being made. Telco operators across APAC have been meeting these demands head on. With the challenges they face, innovative solutions such as those offered by Iceotope are the only way they can continue to do so.
