A whitepaper from Melbourne’s Centre for Energy Efficient Telecommunications (CEET) has cast doubt on traditional thinking regarding the energy consumption of cloud computing.

“Previous analysis and industry focus has missed the point,” blistered the Power of Wireless Cloud report to open its executive summary. “Access networks, not data centres, are the biggest threat to the sustainability of cloud services.”

As straight to the point as this is, what are the underlying reasons behind this summation?

According to the researchers, the wireless infrastructure is a more fundamental part of the cloudy ecosystem, with data centres just a part of a larger space. “Wireless cloud is a surging sector with implications that cannot be ignored,” the report notes.

This certainly raises an interesting point, and the statistics provided by CEET unsurprisingly bear this out.

Wireless access network technologies account for 90% of total wireless cloud energy consumption, with data centres only …