What is the trade-off between CO2 emission and video-conferencing QoE?

Abstract

It is a natural thing that users of multimedia services want to have the highest possible Quality of Experience (QoE), when using said services. This is especially so in contexts such as video-conferencing and video streaming services, which are nowadays a large part of many users’ daily life, be it work-related Zoom calls, or relaxing while watching Netflix. This has implications in terms of the energy consumed for the provision of those services (think of the cloud services involved, the networks, and the users’ own devices), and therefore it also has an impact on the resulting CO₂ emissions. In this column, we look at the potential trade-offs involved between varying levels of QoE (which for video services is strongly correlated with the bit rates used), and the resulting CO₂ emissions. We also look at other factors that should be taken into account when making decisions based on these calculations, in order to provide a more holistic view of the environmental impact of these types of services, and whether they do have a significant impact.