mBalance says it is helping mobile operators protect the environment, with software claimed to minimize energy consumption and provide operators considerable savings in both hardware costs and carbon footprint. And with mBalance's latest TextPass Suite 7 software release, the company is claiming to provide extreme SMS routing and delivery performance on existing hardware.
"Sending an SMS is becoming cheaper due to competition and regulatory price rulings, which results in even more use of SMS by subscribers. At the same time, mature operators need to be more conscious of the environmental impact of their heavy energy consumption. The result: these operators are now, more than ever, focused on reducing their carbon footprint. mBalance's new messaging systems allow them to do this while at the same time save considerably on server hardware. This all means a more competitive business for them," commented mBalance CEO Marien van Ouwerkerk.
Mobile network capacity, one of the most effective ways to compare offerings, has traditionally been expressed in messages per second, but this number doesn't tell the customer anything about the hardware or energy efficiency needed to achieve it. mBalance believes this is better expressed as the power consumption per messages delivered, the common unit for this is kiloWatt hour (kWh). The mBalance modular SMS routing platform handles 140 Million messages per kWh – 30 times less energy than traditional SMSC (Short Message Service Centre) systems with comparable delivery capacity.
mBalance's Green Messaging is also said to fall in line with the new environmental policies set by the GSM Association, which has launched a renewable energy push for mobile networks called the Green Power for Mobile Program. The goal is to help the mobile industry to become more aware of its power consumption and its effects on the environment. The idea is not only to lower the energy consumption of existing (messaging) infrastructures, but also to introduce renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, or sustainable bio-fuels.