e&
Headquartered in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), e& (previously known as Etisalat Group) offers mobile, fixed broadband, and technology services to 248 million aggregate subscribers across Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East.
e& moved up two places to 9th this year, following improvements in its governance transparency. The company, previously known as Etisalat, rebranded as e& (etisalat and) in 2022 and has been diversifying its services by expanding into digital offerings, such as AI-driven services, cloud computing, and ride-sharing. The company now describes itself as a “global technology group.”
This year, with an over 20-point increase, the company achieved the largest improvement in governance disclosures among all telcos evaluated. However, e& still lagged behind most of its peers in the ranking and remained opaque about key areas affecting its users. For instance, it continued to provide limited information on how it handles network shutdown demands despite operating in a number of markets that witnessed internet shutdowns over the past two years, including Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In business, the company continued to broaden its product portfolio and expand its operations. For instance, in December 2023, it acquired a 50.03 percent share in Careem Technologies, “an everything app” that provides services that include food delivery, ride sharing, and bicycle renting in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia. In 2024, e& expanded its operations in Europe by buying a 50 percent plus one share in Netherlands-based PPF Telecom Group’s assets in Bulgaria, Hungary, Serbia, and Slovakia. The company’s expansion and diversification strategies seem to be paying off as it reported record revenue and net profit in 2024.
The company, however, still faced scrutiny over its human rights impacts. In December 2023, KLP, Norway’s largest pension company, removed e& and 10 other companies, including its telco rival Ooredoo, from its investment portfolio, citing “an unacceptable, sector-specific risk of contributing to human rights abuses.” The decision followed a due diligence process of KLP’s investments in the Gulf region.
The 2026 RDR Index: Telco Giants Edition covers policies that were active on August 31, 2025. Policies that came into effect after August 31, 2025 were not evaluated for this ranking.
Scores reflect the average score across the services we evaluated, with each service weighted equally.
We rank companies on their governance, and on their policies and practices affecting freedom of expression and privacy.
e& performed best in this category. It made a strong commitment to privacy, but did not explicitly commit to freedom of expression and information (G1). The company disclosed strong governance management oversight of privacy at board, executive and management levels, but did not explicitly state that this oversight covers freedom of expression (G2). The company shared almost nothing about its due diligence processes (G4). While it provided a grievance mechanism enabling users to submit privacy and freedom of expression complaints, it was unclear how it processed complaints and provided remedy (G6a).
The company’s performance in this category remained poor, with little progress from the 2022 RDR Index. Out of 24 indicators in this category, e& received no credit on 15 of them. Its mobile service was relatively clear about the types of content and activities it prohibits, but provided limited clarity on how it enforces these rules (F3a). It disclosed nothing about its policies for ad content and targeting (F3b, F3c) and how it handles third-party demands, particularly government requests for restricting content and accounts, or any data relevant to these requests (F5, F6).
Although it improved in some areas, e& still lagged behind all companies ranked in the privacy category, with the exception of Ooredoo. It disclosed some of the information it collects (P3a) and shares (P4), but did not report on the types of information it infers (P3b). Nor was it transparent about its data retention policies and practices (P6). It kept silent about how it handles government surveillance demands (P10a). It had a relatively strong performance on security oversight (P13), but offered no information about how it addresses security vulnerabilities (P14) and responds to data breaches when they occur (P15).