Global telco’s sustainability reports reviewed

Photo credit WTL photos

When I published my review of tech company sustainability reports a couple of weeks back, it was suggested that I should add in telco’s as well. Instead, for clarity, I decided to publish a separate review of telco sustainability reports here.

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Some points to note from the review:

• BT & Telefonica both produced very good reports (though Telefonica’s was only in Spanish which limits how accessible it is outside of the Spanish-speaking world)
• T-Mobile were let down by their chairman, Ren? Obermann, whose contribution was a cut & paste of an online interview he did a couple of months back as opposed to a report specific communication. Matters were made worse by the fact that the picture of the chairman in the report shows him with bottled water. In their Sustainability Report!
• China Mobile produced an excellent report (in Chinese and English) which was let down only by the lack of external audit
• Telecom Italia’s report was one of the best in terms of data transparency
• AT&T’s 2008 report is very nicely laid out but it is dated, only to GRI level C and not externally assured
• Telenor didn’t bother producing a report (that I could find) but they do have a Corporate Responsibility site while
• 3 (owned by Hutchinson Whampoa) don’t have any Corporate Responsibility site or report that I could find on any of its sites. For shame.

If you have any updates or would like to suggest a company, please feel free to do so in the comments below and I’ll happily update the post.

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