Feb 26

Written by: James Burke
Monday, February 26, 2007

Web 2.0’s success has been reliant on ever increasing bandwidth at ever decreasing price that provides the basic infrastructure for delivering a range of innovative services.

However, this infrastructure needs good old electricity to power the servers and further energy to power the air conditioning units to cools the sometimes inefficient servers down so that they can operate at their optimum.

As we start to rely more and more on Web 2.0 services the increase in server farms within data centres places an increasing burdon on our energy supplies compounded by how we now access these web based services in the workplace and office:
•    Increase in WiFi hubs, routers and hotspots that are always on
•    Increase in laptops with WiFi (usually always on)
•    Increase in multi radio phones to cater for Bluetooth, GSM, 3G and WiFi
•    Increase in WiFi enabled PDAs
•    Increase in music and video streaming to TV via WiFi etc.

Although some Web 2.0 services are definitely helping in reducing carbon footprint in terms of lessening unnecessary travel through ICT’s such as desktop video conferencing they are also increasing the footprint due to consumer demand for “always on” connectivity and service.

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