The latest Ranking Digital Rights Index highlights ongoing gaps and vulnerabilities in how telecom giants around the world safeguard key human rights, despite mounting risks posed by AI, digital advertising, and government pressure.
Ranking Digital Rights (RDR) today launched the 2026 RDR Index: Telco Giants Edition (TGE), with support from its research partner, the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable, and its fiscal sponsor, Superbloom Design. The 2026 TGE marks RDR’s first research launch since the group renewed its mission as an independent initiative.
This year’s Index is RDR’s first assessment since 2022 of 12 of the world’s most powerful telecommunications companies. It examines how these multinationals’ policies and disclosures affect people’s rights to privacy, freedom of expression, and access to information. It follows last year’s 2025 RDR Index: Big Tech Edition, which exposed major pendulum swings in the transparency of platform giants.
Telefónica held on to its top spot for the fourth time in a row, with a score of 57%. MTN and América Móvil catapulted from sixth to second and from seventh to third place, respectively. Their gains mark the first time that any telecom company headquartered in an “emerging market” has ranked among the top three in RDR’s transparency assessments. Ooredoo again placed last, though its overall score crossed into the double digits for the first time.
Nine of the 12 companies improved their overall transparency, particularly in the lower half of the ranking. However, some long-standing frontrunners, largely based in Europe and the United States, showed clear signs of stagnation, and in some cases, declined across key areas. On critical issues such as network shutdowns and government censorship demands, the world’s most powerful telecom giants are less transparent today than they were four years ago.
“Powerful telecom operators act as gatekeepers of the internet for billions of people,” said Dr. Jan Rydzak, RDR’s Executive Director. “They have a duty to show they can be trusted as responsible stewards of their customers’ rights. Our report today shows that breakthroughs among the underdogs are possible. But it also validates the fear that aggressive coercion by governments and the rush to adopt AI are steering industry giants away from accountability.”
The 2026 RDR Index revealed some progress in major telecom operators’ corporate governance and processes. For the first time, all 12 telcos disclosed that they conduct some form of human rights impact or risk assessment. Most companies explicitly included users’ privacy or freedom of expression in the scope of their impact assessment processes, though the quality and depth of these disclosures varied widely.
At the same time, the Index identifies serious gaps in areas where users face direct risks.
Our research found severe inadequacies in telecom giants’ transparency on government demands and the enforcement of their own safety policies. Despite a sustained surge of AI-facilitated scams executed over telecom networks, none of the companies disclosed data on the content or accounts they restrict whenever their own policies are violated. Only three published some statistics on government orders to block websites, IP addresses, or user accounts. To make matters worse, some large telcos are withdrawing from established multistakeholder spaces that focus on mitigating the risks of government pressure, from forced handovers of user data to full-blown authoritarian crackdowns.
We also find that telecom operators are racing to adopt AI while providing little meaningful transparency about how these systems are governed. Nearly all companies published AI-related human rights commitments or baseline AI principles. But most of these are high-level and non-binding. Only few firms provided concrete information about internal oversight, AI development policies, or whether users can opt out of having their data used to develop algorithmic systems. As strategic partnerships between telcos and AI giants proliferate, this lack of transparency invites significant risk with hardly any assurance for billions of people who rely on telecom services.
Targeted advertising remains another major concern. All 12 telcos acknowledged using some form of ad targeting, and most offered opt-out options. Yet companies shared little about how their targeting systems work, what data is inferred about users, or whether users can control automated inferences made about them.
The findings come at a moment of rapid change in the telecommunications sector. AI integration, deregulation, concentrated power and ownership, network disruptions, cybersecurity concerns, and growing ties between corporate and state interests are all magnifying the risks that people face worldwide.
“Local human rights defenders and frontline activists have spent years highlighting the risks and abuses for which telcos can serve as vectors, from surveillance to massive data breaches,” said Rydzak. “But these companies are consistently less transparent outside their home markets, often finding themselves weaponized as instruments of authoritarian power. This cannot become a permanent reality.”
Ranking Digital Rights calls on telecommunications companies to move beyond broad commitments and come forth with more detailed information about their practices and policies that affect users’ rights. RDR also urges civil society, regulators, investors, and journalists to pay more critical attention to telcos as core actors in the digital rights landscape and hold them to a high standard of transparency toward the people they serve.
The full 2026 RDR Index: Telco Giants Edition, including company rankings, data, and analysis, is available at: https://rankingdigitalrights.org/tge26
Media Contact: Samantha Ndiwalana, Advocacy Director, Ranking Digital Rights
About Ranking Digital Rights
Founded in 2013, Ranking Digital Rights works to promote freedom of expression, privacy, and accountability on the internet by creating global standards and incentives for companies to respect and protect users’ rights. RDR evaluates the policies and practices of the world’s most powerful tech and telecom companies, analyzing their impact on people’s fundamental human rights. We are the only organization in the world that produces detailed, open assessments of companies’ commitments and policies affecting users’ freedom of expression and privacy, anchored in international human rights standards. RDR’s work guides policymakers, investors, and advocates seeking to shape a digital public sphere in which networked technologies respect human rights, strengthen democracy, and promote equity and justice for people everywhere. RDR is fiscally sponsored by Superbloom Design, a nonprofit organization supporting a variety of efforts to advance a more equitable, just, and community-governed tech ecosystem.
