With the risk of it being hot air I still hope initiatives like the Ericsson-UN talks will change things for the better. But there is much to be done. Much much more. I am thinking of some concepts for eco-games and apps. Not stuff that will change climate, but increase awareness. That is the first step. When you are aware of a problem and how you can attack the problem you have the tools to act. And it is a bottom-up movement that will change this. CEOs and their spin doctors can do somethings, but as long as it is part of corporate marketing and PR more than changing the attitude person by person it will be more hot air than real change. But it helps and I am happy to see the efforts. But it is just one small part of the total effort needed.

A short but important post after a heavenly vacation in Sardinia. Now I am back in the saddle again. Charged and ready to go. Hypercharged.

I continue my short series of telecom and wireless in a larger perspective than just mobile entertainment and apps. It must be the effect of watching our garden explode with new life again that triggers this.

In the environmetal debate the mobile industry is not very present. Despite the graduation from only offering token “green telecoms” slots at conferences, to being a real subject, wireless has not made it to the main stage of the climate discussion.

What’s worse is that at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December wireless is not even on the agenda. At MWC in Barcelona, claims were made that the CO2 emission in connection with “running” a mobile operator’s customer for one year corresponds to the CO2 emission from one hour of car driving. I will not argue the facts but if we assume that the order of magnitude is somewhat right, the implication is pretty substantial.

We need to get beoynd “let’s use more energy efficient servers and low energy bulbs” when it comes to seeing what telecoms can do for the environment. It still seems like most of the discussion is on renewable energy etc. Even though some sober calculations show that some so called solutions are completely unrealistic. David MacKay’s book Without the hot air reveals has some good examples for you.

In the light of the fact that telecoms already do a lot for the environment, but surely can do much better, it feels criminal not to make use of this and create some impact. Politicians, time to talk to the telco execs? Telco execs, time to talk to the politician about other things than radio spectrum and license auctions? The self proclamied recovered politician Al Gore has started to bridge the gap somewhat. His keynote speech at CTIA in Las Vegas in March touched on this. Hopefully he will be able to drag telecom as a climate changer for good onto the world stage.

A final word goes to the hosts at the UN conference in Copenhagen in December – please put telecoms on the agenda and invite the key players from the telecom industry!

Maybe you thought it as well as I did when the story broke; “Yet, another example of how an individual with his own phone could show the world what really happened”. With services like Bambuser you can also broadcast it live to the world in real time.

Things like this shows the power of mobile and how it can work as a tool to protect basic human values and democracy. This is an area where we only have seen the tip of the iceberg. Similarly there are huge positive impacts mobile technologies and services can have on the environment. Then we have mobile health. I have spent some time recently thinking of mobile public services. Mobile is the largest global network and we see more frequent examples of the general public getting pretty good at using this small yet powerful tool.

I would love to hear your views on good public service mobile services and use cases. I will start feed in more of my thinking around this area going forward.