BT Group has implemented energy-saving ‘cell sleep’ technology across its EE mobile sites nationwide, with anticipated energy savings of up to 4.5 million KWh per year across EE’s estate.

Being the UK’s largest provider of fixed-line broadband and mobile services, BT Group’s networks account for around 89% of its total energy consumption.

To increase network energy efficiency, BT has announced that it will introduce ‘cell sleep’ software across its EE mobile sites following successful trials in each of the UK’s home nations.

This ‘cell sleep’ technology puts certain 4G LTE capacity carriers to sleep when the capacity is not needed.

How it works is that the data from each site informs the statistical algorithms. Machine learning then predicts periods of low traffic for each site. The system autonomously informs the functionality that puts the carriers to ‘sleep’ at the sites.

An option for an even lower power state called ‘deep sleep’ can also be scheduled – for example, during overnight...