Partially funded by the European Union's Seventh Framework Program (FP7), the EARTH research project originally aimed to achieve a 50 percent reduction in the energy consumption of 4th Generation (4G) mobile wireless communications networks.

The result exceeded the expectations and is one of the reasons the EARTH project won the prestigious 4th Future Internet Award this year.

About 15 telecommunications service providers, component and infrastructure vendors and academic institutions joined their hands to cut the energy consumption as well as enable growth in mobile data traffic.

"We have taken Green to the heart of our research programmes," said Tod Sizer, head of access research at Bell Labs, the research arm of Alcatel-Lucent. "Our commitment to initiatives such as EARTH is a prominent example of how Alcatel-Lucent is driving sustainable innovation. We know it cannot be accomplished alone, and we need models of action like EARTH."