How Disaggregated Architectures Can Accelerate Green Telco Ambitions

Introduction

As the global telco industry increases its focus on ESG and sustainability, disaggregation—from the network stack down to semiconductors—emerges as a powerful enabler.

Having worked across both the semiconductor and infrastructure domains, I see disaggregated architectures as a practical, immediate lever to translate ESG goals into measurable impact—delivering energy efficiency, flexibility, and future-proof scalability.

This article, as the first step - focuses on the Telco Stack and Topology, and its impact on ESG, while the upcoming articles would bring in focus on disaggregation at the SoC level

Image from Adobe Stock Image (Courtesy:: progressman)

Current Scope of Disaggregation in Telcos

Disaggregation in telecom is the shift from vertically integrated, vendor-locked systems to open, modular, and software-defined architectures. Originating in cloud and IT, it enables telcos to independently source, deploy, and upgrade network components across all layers of the stack, while moving towards Commercial Of The Shelf (COTS) hardware, and portable software.

Key Elements

• Hardware/Software Decoupling: Proprietary appliances give way to white-box hardware running independent or open-source software

• Modular Network Functions: Monolithic functions are split into VNFs and CNFs for agility and scalability

• Open Interfaces & Standards: Open APIs (e.g., O-RAN, ONIE) allow multivendor interoperability

  
  

Disaggregation Across the Stack

• Hardware Layer: Shift to white-box gear using generic silicon cuts CapEx and vendor lock-in

• Software Layer: Network OS and functions are decoupled, virtualized, and containerized for flexible deployment

• SDN: Separates control and data planes, enabling centralized, programmable network management

• RAN (Open RAN): Splits baseband into RU/DU/CU components; RIC adds AI-based optimization

• Core Network: Moves to cloud-native microservices for agility, upgrades, and scaling

• Edge: Supports lightweight, low-latency deployments for IoT and real-time services

  
  

Why Disaggregation Changes the Game

Traditional telco systems are hardware-bound, monolithic, and slow to evolve. This rigidity makes energy optimization, innovation, and scale both costly and inefficient. Disaggregation breaks that model by decoupling software from hardware, enabling modular upgrades, and empowering operators to choose best-in-class components.

Leaner Infrastructure, Greener Outcomes

With disaggregated architectures, you can:

• Deploy only what’s needed, where it’s needed—significantly reducing unnecessary power draw and rack space.

• Leverage open interfaces that allow rapid integration of more energy-efficient hardware, software, and even AI-driven cooling or power routing systems.

• Simplify the rollout of edge-native, energy-optimized microservices, minimizing data transport overhead and latency

• Leverage generic hardware - semiconductor fabs while they are expensive in terms of water and energy. Reuse of generic hardware, rather than facbricating a specialized hardware means reuse of existing lines in a fab, less addiitonal trial-and-error for new lines, lower demand in Telco does not cause inventory pileup and the associated enviromental costs, less frequent specialized tooling changes etc..

• Energy per Bit movement equaltion: Disaggregation provides the obvious solution to ''slice and dice and deal'' with data at mulitple layers, thereby reducing the need for additional unncessary movement of the data that affect the Energy per Bit equation. In a data rich environment and AI systems that are fundamentaly run on data - reducing the ''data that is moved'' is key.

Semiconductors: The Green Differentiator

Chipset choices matter immensely. Energy-efficient processors, accelerators, and networking silicon can slash energy use per bit and extend the lifecycle of deployed hardware. Add modularity, and you gain the ability to refresh selectively, reducing e-waste and total cost of ownership.

As AI becomes a key component, and Telco see themselves as a viable option for being the Sovereign AI chocie and natural extension to being AI Factories and AI Giga Factories. Energy become consumption with AI becomes key. As Hyperscalers acquire nuclear reactors to power their AI Factories, with either a GPU based or specialized HW (TPU) etc based seiconductor choices, alternative archiectures that segue away from the traiditonal Von Neumann architecture and are much more power and performance efficient become a key consideration.

AI & Automation: Sustainability’s Secret Weapon

Once networks are software-defined, you unlock the real force multiplier: AI and intelligent automation. These tools dynamically optimize power, services, anticipate failures, and balance loads to extend asset life and shrink emissions footprint.

What can Disaggregation be in the future ....

While the Telco disaggregation, ensures 'Energy Efficiency'' at a system and infrastructure level enables. The next evolution would be at a SoC level, which leads us to - Chiplets, Efficient Chipet Interconnects, Advanced Packaging ....

Conclusion

In summary, telco disaggregation, which began at the network and infrastructure level, is now poised to permeate down to the silicon. This shift to chiplet-based architectures, enabled by advanced interconnects and packaging, represents a profound leap in resource efficiency and energy reduction directly at the heart of telco hardware. It moves telcos closer to a truly "green" infrastructure by optimizing from the ground up, bit by bit, and ultimately, watt by watt.

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👉 For deeper insights into how this impacts your Telco or AI Factory strategy—whether in semiconductor decisions, AI, or greener energy transitions—feel free to schedule a time here: https://lnkd.in/eTk5pQxx

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