India's Indus Towers has converted 50,000 of its towers to outdoor facilities to save air conditioning costs.
The tower joint venture of Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular and Vodafone India is aiming to reduce energy consumption at its base stations by converting indoor sites to outdoor sites and couping a free cooling unit with air conditioners, the Economic Timessaid.
Indus Towers estimates that air conditioning contributes 20-30% of the total energy consumption of its mobile towers.
“The company has been focusing on enabling communications through sustainable green solutions to reduce carbon emissions and consumption of diesel, thus saving energy across all sites,” Indus Towers said in a statement.
With various initiatives Indus Towers has so far converted around 35% of its 115,000 towers to green sites.
Indus Towers was created in 2007 when its owners merged their tower assets into an independent tower company.
In September, Indus Towers signed a tower sharing deal with Reliance Jio Infocomm, the operator rolling out a nationwide TD-LTE network.