A real-life carbon-neutral ISP

Australian ISP Internode has been carbon-neutral for more than a year, happily paying 20% more to power its data centers and offices.

Telecom Asia recently talked to Internode about its decision to go 100% green. The company acknowledges that the cost of renewable energy – such as from wind and solar power sources – is higher. But it is a cost Internode is willing to take on because of the positive publicity the company receives from marketing its greenness.

Internode uses solar-powered microwave towers as part of its effort to deliver a voice and data broadband network to 6,000 residents and businesses over a broad area in Australia. According to Internode, the towers have batteries to run for several days without significant sunlight and are remotely monitored.

Internode appears to be on the leading edge of several technological waves. For example, Telecom Asia reports that the ISP is also a user of a half-million-dollar Cisco TelePresence system, to connect folks in Sydney and Melbourne with the headquarters in Adelaide.

Plus, Internode started a trial earlier this year that was a first in Australia, allowing users to run IPv6 natively over its national ADSL network. The ISP has an IPv6 core, but most traffic runs over IPv4 in dual-stack mode. Internode plans to make the native IPv6 service generally available by the middle of 2010.

But anyway, with power such a large part of an ISP’s costs, would a U.S. ISP be willing to make the leap to carbon-neutral operation? Internode is a privately owned company, which makes these decisions somewhat easier. With a public company focused on profits for shareholders, would paying a 20% premium for power even be considered? Let me know if you know of other organizations that have taken the plunge.

Jeff Caruso is site editor at Network World.