SYSTEMS INTEGRATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT

Governments and businesses alike are increasingly taking account of en vironmental concerns in their own operations, with an overall objectiv e of moving towards a sustainable society, i.e, one that meets the nee ds of today without compromising the well-being of future generations. Telecommunications has nor been viewed as an activity that causes sev ere environmental problems and has, therefore, been omitted from the d ebate at leaching solutions to current problems. Tile collaborative pr oject described in this paper, in which BT played a leading role, unde rtook to produce a network operators' charter which would commit telec ommunications' providers to certain minimum levels of environmental be haviour. To meet these levels, internal activities have been assessed and best practices developed for adoption, The commercial and societal benefits in using telecommunications services were also modelled so p rovide an estimate of the advantages to be gained.