This framework creates new challenges and opportunities for the ICT sector that deserve special and urgent attention. In one hand, the estimates of world population growth and the spread of market economies seem to indicate the appearance of new clients and new business opportunities for companies. On the other hand, this will also require us to anticipate initiatives that contribute to preserve a sustainable society.
Telecommunication solutions and services will allow alternative models to people’s mobility, knowledge acquisition, access to health and information and ideas exchange, reducing resources consumption and improving economic and environmental efficiency.
PT actively participates in international organizations, and it was a founding member of Green Touch initiative, a consortium of top partners in the industry, research institutions and non-governmental organizations, which aims at developing solutions to reduce ICT energy consumption up to 1 000 times as well as its carbon footprint.
The company has been and wishes to continue to be a driving force in this new era. We do not stop to look ahead and built a new fibre optic network that will serve current and generations to come, laying the foundations of new ways of living, working and communicating for the next 100 years.
To fulfil this goal, the company planned and is building a new fibre optic network till the client’s houses. Known as Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH), this network received an innovation award for the segment of “Deployment and Operation of FTTH Networks”, corresponding to the most innovative fibre optic network in Europe. This will allow the company to leverage services and features which will ensure a wider commercial offer, supported in a better cost, energy and other resources consumption rationalization.
In what concerns the mobile network, the investment that PT has been doing towards the promotion of broadband development and improvement is a key factor for the mobility services as well as for the rising internet use in Portugal. For these reasons, PT belongs to a restrict group of worldwide operators that engaged in 4G LTE (Long Term Evolution) pilot projects and, at the same time, is the first Portuguese operator to extend this project to academic, laboratorial and industrial environments.
The company is also planning a new Data Centre that once built will be among the largest in Europe and that will be a sustainability landmark: its cooling systems will be powered mainly by wind and solar energies. Furthermore, it will be located on a remote area of the country, promoting this way new direct and indirect employment and the development of the region.
Projects like these are to be multiplied and developed by PT with the enthusiasm and determination of those who believe that technological evolution will enable new opportunities to the telecommunications sector, simultaneously responding to the three cornerstones: economic development, environmental preservation and social balance.