I call back my hometown every day, 60 minutes on average. Normally, I use my cellphone to make a call after 9pm. which is convenient and free of charge at that time. So, there is no reason to think of landlines. When I walk pass my home phone, I just wonder that how often people use this device when almost every single one has a mobile phone.
Is using a landline instead of cellphone save more money/power? I don’t know. As far as I do research on this, I can’t find numbers of landline power consumption. My guess is landlines would be a more ’sustainable’ choice. I am going to experiment, when I’m at home, making a phone call by using landlines for one quarter and consider that is a greener way or not.
April 22, 2009 at 9:13 pm |
Very interesting things to consider! A very unique PSP and I’m very curious to hear what you discover.
Things that come to mind — the amount of infrastructure that goes into landlines and cell phones. Cell phones require towers… landlines require wires to run in to every individual home.
Can Skype or Google Voice play a role?
Good luck!
June 4, 2009 at 10:50 am |
This is my long journey from this PSP…
As an international student, calling back home is a usual thing to do. There are many ways to contact people in my home country. Normally, I use my cell phone to make a call because it is easy and convenient. I can call anywhere, anytime. When I have to work on PSP, I think it is a good idea to ‘rethink’ if making a call from cellphones is sustainable. How about a landline phone sitting on my desk? Why don’t I use landline to call? That is my motivation for DP3. So, in this project, I consider three ways of telecommunication; landline, cellphone, and Skype. Landline is old and obsolete, but almost every house hold has at least one. Cell phone becomes a device which some people cannot live without it. Skype is new and fancy. It requires internet connection which is a constraint for this way.
Before working on PSP, I usually use my cell phone, rarely use a landline and use Skype in the morning if I am free from work and study. In this project, I change my behavior by calling from a landline whenever I can and trying not to use a mobile phone. A few days later, I found that talking on a landline phone is not convenient. I could not move around my apartment when talking on the phone. If I wanted to, my conversation was interrupted. It was more annoying if I had to get out of my place while talking. I had to end call and recall with my cell phone. It affected both ends of conversation. After a while, I just got used to it and everything seemed to be better. There were also uncontrollable factors in the experiment. When I was at work, I did not have a personal landline. So, it was difficult to keep my experiment consistently. Apart from that, if my friends called me from my hometown, they would dial my cell phone number first. An intent to reduce the amount of time using a cell phone was not easily achieved.
Skype video call is different from using a home/mobile phone. Facial expressions and gestures can be seen real-time. It helps a lot when people have to be away from home. More than that, I do not have to pay extra money to communicate this way because the fixed internet and electricity costs are included in my university bill. For a home/mobile phone, if I talk more, I have to pay call fee more. A downside of Skype is, because of free service, the conversation might take longer than necessary. It could reduce overall outcome in terms of energy consumption, study, work, and relationship.
About a month from the beginning, I gather talk time from cell phone, landline and Skype. The next thing is to calculate how much money/energy I can save. When I first tried to find information about landlines, it took me a while to find the voltage and resistance of the device. (Off-topic: I saw many interesting things like drawing energy out of landline cable.) I think it was better if I could measure ‘real’ voltage coming in the landline. So, then I took my landline phone apart to see the circuit board and bring a voltmeter to measure voltage. It read 12 V for incoming cable. For resistance of the phone, I used a nominal value that I found in Wikipedia. I can calculate the energy that I used which is about 0.116 Wh/day. It is quite low energy consumption. For my cell phone, it is a LG CU515, folded model. I looked up the information from the website and, after calculation, I used about 0.587 Wh/day. Skype has most energy consumption which is about2.478 Wh/day which is considered from CPU usage of Skype.
In summary, landline consumes less energy than cellphone and Skype. In terms of energy side, it should be the most sustainable way of telecommunication but, in personal level, it does not help maintaining relationship that much. Skype offers facial expression and gesture in real-time which cell phone and landline do not have. In overall for personal level, an individual should try to use landline first and, if necessary, call from a cellphone or Skype. According to social sustainability, Stanford might not pay attention on this issue that much because cellphone consumes few energy compared to other electric devices on campus. This project has a large impact to environment because calling from landline prolongs battery life-time and it is going to reduce e-waste eventually.