Halving energy consumption per unit and saving enough electricity to power 4,500 households – CETIN Hungary’s award-winning sustainability program shows how innovative solutions can make a technology company’s operations more environmentally friendly while creating both business and social value.

As Hungary’s first mobile telecommunications infrastructure provider, CETIN Hungary has long been committed to sustainable data transmission. The company actively works to minimize the environmental impact of its operations, beyond meeting legal and regulatory requirements. The CETIN 5Green program places energy efficiency at the center of network development and operations, embedding energy-conscious thinking and solutions into everyday processes.

The digital world’s appetite for data is relentless: users stream content, engage in video calls, and smart devices communicate continuously. The rapid rise of artificial intelligence further accelerates this trend, driving exponential growth in data traffic. Ensuring that the infrastructure supporting this demand is sustainable has become a critical challenge. CETIN Hungary’s energy efficiency program, part of its broader sustainability strategy, aims to reduce specific energy consumption — the energy required per unit of mobile infrastructure service — even as data volumes soar.

After a four-year process and an investment exceeding HUF 102 billion, CETIN has completed the modernization of its entire network infrastructure. Through systematic experimentation and efforts that went beyond industry standards, the company pushed the boundaries of best practices to identify innovative solutions that enhance energy efficiency without compromising service quality or customer experience. The program is built on five interconnected pillars:

1. Modernizing the mobile network: Advanced modern equipment now combines multiple frequency bands, delivering significant energy savings. Building a high-capacity, full-scale 5G infrastructure is also key, as this technology offers the lowest energy consumption per unit.

2. Efficient energy management: Energy-saving operation of radio and transmission equipment involves multi-level interventions in network operations, optimizing base station energy use while maintaining user experience. The network dynamically adjusts to real-time demand.

3. Upgrading power supply systems: Newly introduced equipment operates with reduced heat and conversion losses.

4. Modernizing data centers: Server capacity is aligned with actual demand, allowing reductions when usage is low and saving energy.

5. The reconfiguration of the cooling systems at base stations and data centers involves not only the modernization of equipment — air conditioning replacement and the introduction of free cooling using lower outside air temperatures — but also innovative solutions such as the controlled increase of the permissible operating temperature within safe limits. This also reduces the amount of energy used for cooling.

The results are tangible and measurable. Energy consumption per gigabyte has fallen by nearly half (approximately 47%) in two years, and CETIN now saves 9.9 GWh of electricity annually — equivalent to the yearly consumption of more than 4,500 average Hungarian households.

Based on these results, the program has been awarded the Professional Excellence Award for Sustainable Infocommunications this year.