Indoor 5G deployment investments can influence an organization's sustainability stature while benefiting its economic success and the broader society, according to Ericsson 5G RAN Chief Architect Colin Bowdery.

Those three tenants – planet, profit, and people – make up what's known as the triple bottom line, which is a framework that qualifies the impact of a company's decisions beyond economic profit and aims to "drive better business and societal outcomes," he wrote in a blog.

"Since being introduced to this concept, I have considered technology investments in a new way ... that could benefit the people and planet as well as yield economic profit for adopters," Bowdery wrote. "The triple bottom line is an important tool for assessing the impact 5G brings to your business," and "augmenting the analysis of solution sets beyond economic profit" creates "compelling cases for the benefit of the shareholders, the community, and the planet."

5G technology is particularly suited to progress each aspect of the triple bottom line, he explained, citing the rise of bring your own device (BYOD) in the workspace that requires coverage to serve more than one network operator. Systems that fit these characteristics include multi-operator and neutral host. Enterprises typically choose between outdoor to indoor, active-distributed antenna systems (A-DAS), uncoordinated small cells, or distributed radio systems to provide multi-operator or neutral host 5G connectivity in campus environments.

Bowdery explained distributed radio systems, which are a hybrid of A-DAS and femtocell architectures, is the most efficient indoor 5G deployment option for the planet and enterprise budgets. These typically require less hardware and are more efficient to implement than a straight A-DAS deployment, and "one can also appreciate that requiring less hardware is also a benefit to the solution's carbon footprint through reduced manufacturing needs," he wrote.

Building owners and communication service providers (CSPs) have deployed shared antenna systems like A-DAS in campus buildings for decades. Systems like these are technology agnostic and let CSPs deploy network assets directly inside a building, which "has historically produced an economically viable solution for larger spaces albeit at the cost of complexity and inflexibility," Bowdery explained.

Ericsson's indoor product team assessed an office building using A-DAS and found it consumed more than 12,000 watts of power. Bowdery compared this to the team's assessment of a DRS approach, which consumed more than 3,000 watts under similar conditions. That translates to annual energy savings of more than 75,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) and an emissions reduction potential of 53.8 metric tons of carbon dioxide, according to the operator.

From a triple bottom line perspective, indoor network approaches like DRS directly impact an organization's planet objectives and reduce total cost of ownership, which addresses the profit side of the framework. "Given today’s energy uncertainty, this cannot be ignored," Bowdery noted. "At an average rate of 13.28 cents per kWh, this saves $10,079 per year or $50,395 on the five-year total cost of ownership. Such a saving de-risks a firm’s investment from the current impacts of energy uncertainty."