On December 5, we released the first-ever Telco Giants Scorecard, RDR’s evaluation of how transparent the world’s most powerful telecommunications companies are on their policies related to users’ fundamental rights, particularly freedom of expression and privacy. While digital platforms have received a great deal of public attention in recent years for the harms they perpetuate, telcos are still the primary providers of internet access globally. As such, they are just as likely to facilitate human rights violations as Big Tech platforms, yet our findings show that they are even less transparent.
Telcos’ operations are much more intimately tied with governments than those of digital platforms, putting them in a position to enable harms that platforms do not. For example, governments, especially authoritarian regimes, have been ordering telcos to shut down their networks with increasing regularity (including during ongoing protests in Iran). Our friends at Access Now and the #KeepItOn coalition recorded at least 182 internet shutdowns in 2021. In addition, telcos may be ordered to install equipment that enables mass surveillance, including during mega-events like the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar.
But telcos also pose threats of their own to human rights. This includes violations of net neutrality. All but one company we ranked, American telco AT&T, offered zero-rating plans in their home market. Meanwhile, telcos are adopting Big Tech’s surveillance advertising business model, which, as with digital platforms, violates users’ privacy and risks spreading extremist language and disinformation.
Browse our 2022 Telco Giants Scorecard. Here’s what you’ll find:
Company Report Cards: Our most popular feature, each report card highlights a company’s score in the context of recent developments and dives deep into company performance on governance, freedom of expression, and privacy. You can browse report cards for all the telecom companies we rank below.
| Airtel | Deutsche Telekom | Orange |
| América Móvil | Etisalat (e&) | Telefónica |
| AT&T | MTN | Telenor |
| Axiata | Ooredoo | Vodafone |
Key Findings: Our nine key findings essays take a deep dive into year-over-year progress and decline, emerging patterns and longtime trends, problem spots, and opportunities for change:
- “Missed Calls?: It’s time telco giants answer for themselves”
- “Some progress, but more stagnation in 2022”
- “Who made the biggest gains, lost the most ground?”
- “Did you know: Telcos target us with ads, too?”
- “Transparency improves on shutdowns, but telcos still weak on free expression”
- “Companies commit to net neutrality while ignoring the hazards of zero rating”
- “The disconnect between HQ and local subsidiaries results in less transparency and protection”
- “Unremarkable privacy scores could signal growth in telco-enabled surveillance”
- “ESG Investors take note: Companies are responding to pressure on digital rights”
Also, check out the executive summary, for a comprehensive look at the most important takeaways from this year’s analyses.
Are Telcos Getting a Pass on Digital Rights?
To launch the Telco Giants Scorecard, we hosted a panel of experts to share their perspectives on where telcos are failing to protect digital rights and to consider how they can improve. RDR’s director, Jessica Dheere, opened the conversation with our top takeaways from the 2022 Telco Giants Scorecard and our Scorecards program manager, Veszna Wessenauer, moderated the conversation, which included Jason Pielemeier, executive director, Global Network Initiative; Laura Okkonen, investor advocate at Access Now; and Thomas Lohninger, executive director of epicenter.works. You can watch the full recording here.
Support RDR and Nine Other Digital Rights Organizations This Season
RDR is thrilled to be one of 10 organizations selected by Proton’s community of users that will benefit from Proton’s annual Lifetime Account fundraiser. For the fundraiser, the Swiss company, known for prioritizing privacy, is raffling off 10 Lifetime accounts—including email, VPN, drive, and with access to all premium features. Anyone can buy raffle tickets in the Proton Shop—as many as you like, each for $10—between now and December 26 at 11:59 pm CET.
Last year, the event raised more than $500,000, plus Proton’s own contribution of $100,000. Help us beat that goal this year by supporting the incredible work of all 10 organizations fighting for our digital rights. Winners of the raffle will be announced on December 30 on Proton’s blog.
Red Card on Digital Rights: More from RDR and SMEX at the 2022 World Cup
This fall, RDR teamed up with Arab digital rights organization SMEX to produce a three-part series investigating the state of digital rights in Qatar as the 2022 FIFA World Cup began. Last month, we offered a look at the digital landscape and offered advice to visitors to the Arab Gulf country in “Will Qatar Get a Red Card on Digital Rights?: What You Should Know If You Are Traveling to Qatar for the World Cup.” In a companion piece, SMEX conducted an in-depth analysis of the risks posed by Qatar’s Hayya app, mandatory for visitors to Qatar, as well as for entry into stadiums, fan events, and public transportation.
In the next installment, “Red Card on Digital Rights: A Summary of Qatar’s Foul Plays,” we detail the ways in which people’s privacy has been invaded during the games, from mass surveillance by the 15,000 cameras watching over the tournament to a lack of transparency from telcos like Ooredoo, which took last place (again) in our recent ranking.
You can find all RDR and SMEX’s World Cup-related reports on our new webpage “Red Card on Digital Rights: A story of control, censorship, and state surveillance during the FIFA World Cup in Qatar.”
RDR Drives Shareholder Push on Censorship Demands at Amazon
A group of Amazon shareholders announced 15 proposals calling on the e-commerce giant to address a sweeping array of issues, from human rights to environmental impacts. One of the proposals calls on Amazon to report on the censorship demands it receives from governments around the world, an area where it lags far behind many other tech companies, according to RDR’s research. It was developed jointly by RDR and Open MIC, a non-profit shareholder advocacy group.
Read more about RDR’s work with partners to advance critical proposals at Amazon. —>
Combating Disinformation By Keeping Ads Accountable: RDR’s Submission to Aspen’s Information Disorder Prize
RDR was proud to have been selected as one of four semi-finalists of the “Information Disorder Prize Competition,” held by the Aspen Institute’s Aspen Tech Policy Hub, for our proposed project “Treating Information Disorder by Making Online Ads Accountable.” Our project focused on Meta and Twitter, two global tech giants that derive almost all their revenue from targeted advertising and have an outsized influence on global politics and democracy.
Our research has long shown that surveillance advertising is contributing to our current crisis of global democracy. These consequences were clear in online discourse in the lead-up to recent major elections in Brazil and the U.S. This is why we need a new set of norms for the ad-tech sector that, if upheld, will thwart malicious influence campaigns and disinformation-for-profit operations. Since 2020, RDR has included targeted advertising policies in our company evaluations. Additionally, we’ve recently begun monitoring the myriad forms through which telecom companies are also involved in targeted advertising, including in our recently released Telco Giants Scorecard.
Read more about our findings and policy suggestions for regulating surveillance advertising. →
RDR Media Hits
Tech Policy Press: Justin Hendrix of Tech Policy Press covered the release of the Telco Giants Scorecard in a piece, “Move Over Platforms: Telecoms Deserve Scrutiny on Digital Rights, Says Scorecard.”
Read More at Tech Policy Press
PCMag: Rob Pegoraro discussed the results of the Telco Giants Scorecard for PCMag in “Global Telecom Companies Struggle to Deliver on Human Rights Commitments.”
Other Coverage of the 2022 Telco Giants Scorecard: The release of the Telco Giants Scorecard was also covered in Digital Information World, Sustainable Japan, SMEX, and by Telefónica with several outlets: Servimedia, telecompaper, Yahoo! Finanzas, and PR Noticias highlighting Telefónica’s performance.
Support Ranking Digital Rights!
Ranking Digital Rights is grateful for the support of our funders, including Craig Newmark Philanthropies, Democracy Fund, Ford Foundation, the John and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Luminate, Open Society Foundations, and the Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights & Labor.
As generous as our funders are, we still need your support. As a nonprofit initiative that receives no funding from Big Tech or Telco Giants we rank, we ask you to please help us by doing your part to help keep tech and telco power in check and make a donation today. Thank you!
