Bharti Airtel has migrated over 40,000 of its network sites across India to green technology.
Under its “Project Leap” project, the operator plans to boost its renewable energy focus by increasing its solar rooftop power capacity from 770KWp to 1MWp over the “coming months”.
"We plan to adopt solar and new battery technologies in a big way and double our Green telecom towers by 2020,” said Gopal Vittal, managing director and CEO, Bharti Airtel (India & South Asia).
By 2018, Airtel plans to reduce its carbon footprint by 70% and the new green towers are said to operate on battery-hybrid, lithium-ion and solar-hybrid technologies. It is also investing in new radio technology.
Airtel says it is already reducing power consumption by switching off unused capacity of its telecom towers during lean periods and by optimising signal transmission between the network and the device.
The news comes as Airtel is in talks with Axiata to merge operations in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
