THE SUSTAINABILITY INTERVIEW
81 %
of UK leaders say the digital skills gap is affecting business
How do we ensure the materials we depend on remain available?”
Infrastructure resilience is becoming one of the defining sustainability challenges of the telecom sector. Climate resilience, Dana notes, has not historically received the same attention as decarbonisation. To date, the emphasis has been on“ greening the network”, replacing fossil‐fuel‐powered sites with renewable electricity and improving energy efficiency.
Now, Virgin Media O2 is looking more deeply at how extreme weather and climate‐related risks can disrupt connectivity. The company is embedding climate and nature risk into network planning and investment decisions, alongside continued decarbonisation.
That involves cutting energy use in data centres, ramping up renewable electricity, and using technologies such as IoT and AI to optimise performance. It also means asking harder more strategic questions about long-term resource resilience. Dana points to recent global demand for technologies such as AI placing pressure on supply chains, including components like memory chips. For a business that delivers connected services, this reinforces the importance of building more resilient, circular approaches to hardware.
“ Our focus now is how we can extend device life.” She explains.“ it’ s not only an environmental imperative, it’ s an opportunity to evolve our business model and deliver greater value over time.”
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