A company I very much enjoyed working for was Lucent Technologies (now Alcatel-Lucent). I was there when the tech bubble burst back in 2000 and it was both a challenging and exciting time for the company. I was privileged to work in the UK headquartered 3G mobile networks division where much of the research, development and promotion of advanced mobile technology was undertaken.

As I mentioned earlier, I have followed the progress of companies and technology I was involved in avidly since and it is this period in February each year that one of the biggest mobile events in the world takes place – the GSM Association’s World Congress in Barcelona (which was the 3GSM World Congress in Cannes when I attended with Lucent).

Back in the early years of this decade, we were imagining what the latest mobile technology and devices would mean for consumers and one of my projects was to use new media technologies to help bring this to life at events like 3GSM World Congress.

When it comes to devices and consumer services this is definitely an example of the ‘overestimate/underestimate’ quote I mentioned in an early post. At the outset of 3rd Generation mobile technologies we were undoubtedly over-estimating what would happen in the short term – hence the immense sums the operators were prepared to pay for 3G licences. But seven years on, devices like the iphone have revolutionised how we are thinking about mobile devices and making the mobile web a much more compelling experience.

As far as announcements from this year’s Congress were concerned however, my eye was drawn not to the myriad of new ‘touchscreen’ devices but to a news release from Alcatel-Lucent about significant reductions in base station power consumption that they are achieving with software upgrades. This means that some half a million base stations worldwide can achieve up to 27% power reduction through software controls that manage the hardware more efficiently.

When I worked for Lucent, it was never one for grandiose statements and I always admired its pragmatic views on how the 3rd generation technology would evolve (ie driven by high speed data needs of businesses over consumers) rather than fueling the hype about consumer related developments that simply wouldn’t deliver a return on investment for operators. It is very, very difficult to predict how and where consumers might use new technology as illustrated by the phenomenal growth of something as simple as SMS (text messaging).

So when organisations like Alcatel-Lucent start publicising their energy saving efforts above all else, that optimistic-pessimism meter starts wavering to the optimistic side.

After all, we can all do our bit to be more conscious about the ways we charge our mobile devices but the really significant savings come from improving those extremely power hungry networks.