U.S. telecom service providers need to move immediately to offer “green” communications services, or risk losing out on a multi-trillion dollar global market, an Insight Research study states. A major opportunity exists to develop the services that will help reduce carbon dioxide emissions, but the window of opportunity is only about 18 months, according to the study.

“The big message for [telecom service providers] is that these trillions of dollars worldwide represent new revenue streams, they are not cannibalizing existing revenue streams, and they can be delivered using existing technologies and the existing infrastructure, without requiring massive capital expenditures to make the first dollar,” said Robert Rosenberg, president of Insight Research and author of the study, Communicating Green: Telecommunications Value in Promoting Environmental Improvement, 2008-2013. “It does take a realization of the opportunity and the ability to market and package existing capabilities.”

Service providers in countries that have signed the Kyoto Protocol committing to reduction in carbon dioxide emissions have already moved on this front, Rosenberg said, because of government-mandated rules. U. S. companies, by contrast, are voluntarily reducing CO2 emissions but not with the same urgency. The danger for telecom service providers in the U.S. is that energy companies could co-opt a substantial part of their potential “green” service offerings.

“If you talk to NTT or KPN or Telstra – this is not new news,” Rosenberg said. “A number of carriers have been doing this for a number of years, but not in the U.S. because the U.S. doesn’t have the requirement to reduce emissions. These carriers got in the business in no small way because they saw that energy companies were going to start to poach their clients with services they could provide.”

The Insight Research report spells out potential services and the revenue they could generate for service providers as well as the carbon credits they could generate for customers.