Contents Introduction
Since energy costs contribute significantly to the operational expenditures of telecommunication network operators, network-related energy consumption has become a vital economic interest of network operators today. In the context of increased usage of broadband services and tremendeous expected traffic growth[6],[7],[8] telecommunication networks have to be expanded and it is of interest how they will behave with respect to energy consumption during the forthcoming years. Related work has been performed to predict, for example, the energy consumption of the Internet[2] and of classic fixed-line broadband telecommunication networks[3]. Furthermore, options for increasing the energy efficiency at a network level have been classified and discussed[5].
