In an exclusive interview with Telecom Review during the 18th edition of the Telecom Review Leaders’ Summit, Kenji Takemura, Head of EMEA Transport CoE at NEC, shared insights on how NEC is driving innovation and sustainability within the telecom industry.
Takemura discussed the critical role of AI, green data centers, and advanced connectivity solutions in addressing evolving industry challenges.
Can you give us an overview of how the EMEA Transport Center of Excellence (CoE) functions?
NEC is a global leading ICT company and we have been working in the telecom industry for 125 years. The Center of Excellence (CoE) is a regional and global organization centralizing our expertise, CoE provides multi-vendor and multi-domain system integration and advanced service capabilities to our global customers, especially for IP, Optical networks, security, AI automation, data centers, and enterprise domains.
Why is having a green data center approach important to achieve digital innovation in today’s society? How is NEC implementing this?
Today, AI is transforming industries worldwide. However, as we know, AI is power-intensive and brings new sustainability challenges, such as increasing power consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, particularly for data centers. To balance AI innovation with sustainable growth, we believe AI data centers should be more widely distributed to suburban areas where renewable energy is abundant and energy prices are moderate.
These sustainability challenges are driving the IOWN initiative, which stands for Innovative Optical and Wireless Network. By partnering with the IOWN Global Forum, NEC aims to achieve very high transmission capacity, ultra-low latency, and extremely low power consumption for data center exchanges, contributing to a greener society.
NEC is advancing data center network by “NEC Open and All Optical Network Solutions”, which supports distributed green AI data centers with a flexible open architecture and ecosystem. Our TIP award-winning solution is being utilized to cluster GPUs across multiple distributed data centers and enhances GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS) capabilities for Service Providers
From your perspective, how can we utilize AI for sustainable development? Will it be more beneficial than detrimental?
AI is beneficial across various domains. It can enhance customer support, optimize network operations, and create innovative AI services, including GPUaaS, to monetize telecommunications.
I believe we can confidently say that AI brings huge benefits to the telecom industry. However, to balance AI innovation with sustainability, we need to take a holistic approach. This includes addressing renewable energy usage, selecting sustainable products and solutions, and using AI to optimize power and energy. By doing so, I believe we can leverage power of AI to drive social advancement and promote sustainability.
In the coming years, how will the EMEA Transport CoE respond to the ever-evolving demands of service providers?
During this event, I noticed that many leaders are facing similar challenges. Service providers continue to play a crucial role in delivering connectivity infrastructure, which is really essential for every service and digital transformation. Advancing services, enhancing customer experience, and enabling innovations such as 6G and AI also rely heavily on networks with high capacity, low energy consumption, high reliability, and sustainability.
In this evolution, service providers will encounter numerous challenges, including implementing advanced networks with wider coverages, enhancing operations through automation and AI, and addressing security threats and sustainability issues. The NEC Transport Center of Excellence can support this transformation and drive innovation through comprehensive solutions, such as multi-vendor system integration and advanced service offerings.
Read About Takemura’s Exclusive Keynote at TRS-24: NEC: Harmonizing AI and Sustainable Development
