How AT&T’s network chief hopes to cut a $1.6 billion electricity bill

SEATTLE – AT&T’s Chris Sambar is putting the operator’s growing 5G network to sleep at night – a move he said will help reduce the operator’s annual $1.6 billion network electricity bill.

“We’re constantly trying to reduce that,” Sambar said of AT&T’s power needs. “I think about that a lot.”

Speaking here at the Mobile Future Forward event hosted by Chetan Sharma Consulting, Sambar said that one of his top goals as AT&T’s networking chief is to reduce the operator’s energy needs.

He said that AT&T’s network electricity bill has stayed roughly the same, around $1.6 billion a year, even as traffic on the operator’s network has skyrocketed.

Switching off

One of AT&T’s new strategies to reduce its network energy consumption is to power down parts of its wireless network at night, when it’s mostly unused.

Specifically, he said the operator is turning off its 5G radios working in midband spectrum. He said the operator’s 5G radios in lowband spectrum remain powered on to handle whatever traffic the operator’s customers generate during the night.

“It’s relatively new to us,” he said of the approach.

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