GreenMinutes

A first in the UK telecoms market, all minutes carried across the Gamma Telecom network are CarbonNeutral, helping businesses, the Public Sector and voluntary sectors reduce their carbon footprint.

Each year, Gamma’s carbon footprint is independently assessed by a company called Greenstone Carbon Management who looks at electricity bills and volumes for the amount of energy used in transporting minutes across the Gamma network. Working with The CarbonNeutral Company to offset this carbon footprint, we purchase carbon credits - every 1 tonne of CO2 is ‘neutralised’ by 1 tonne which is saved somewhere else in the world by a climate friendly project that would not have happened without carbon credit investment.

Projects that our carbon credits are being used on include the Sichuan Province Hydro Power Project in China and a Wind Power Project in India, similar to the Jamnagar Project (starts late 2009). 

Gamma's commitment to reducing carbon emissions began in 2006 with the early adoption of IP based soft-switching in our core network, marking the first major initiative of its kind in the UK and reducing energy consumption per minute by 30% within the first year. Soft-switching has allowed us to move from a power-hungry hardware infrastructure to a more software driven environment which uses far less power. Continued investment in this technology has enabled us to reduce the mean power consumption per minute carried each year, even as call traffic has increased over the same time.

Annual power consumption against call minutes per month across Gamma’s network

 

Now the combination of much lower annual power consumption with our carbon offset programme means that channel partners and their customers are using the greenest network in the UK.