Telecommunications companies

Deutsche Telekom AG

Rank: 4th
Score: 35%

Headquartered in Germany, Deutsche Telekom offers mobile, broadband, and other services in more than 50 countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas, with a core customer base of about 248 million mobile users and 22 million broadband lines.

Deutsche Telekom earned the second-highest privacy score of any telco evaluated, but ranked near the bottom in freedom of expression. The company published no data about government or private demands for content or account restrictions, or about its process for policy enforcement. In 2021, the European Court of Justice ruled that Deutsche Telekom’s “StreamOn” zero-rating service violates European Union rules on net neutrality. In April 2022, the service was banned by German regulators, who gave the company until March 2023 to fully discontinue it. The service undermines the company’s own policy commitment to net neutrality, a key component of freedom of expression online.

Despite the company’s growing use of targeted advertising, it had no clear policies in place governing how it helps target or display ads, and failed to show that it assesses the potential human rights impacts of ad targeting. In mid-2022, Deutsche Telekom’s U.S. operating company, T-Mobile, began selling information to advertisers about customers’ app downloads and web browsing history, information that can reveal intimate details about a person, such as sexual orientation. Meanwhile, in Europe, in a bid to find new ways to track users for advertising amid the declining use of third-party tracking cookies, Deutsche Telekom began a trial of TrustPid, a “supercookie” system that links granular data to a user’s phone number and IP address.

Though the company’s privacy score remained high, it slipped from first to second place in the category as Spain-based Telefónica made significant improvements. Deutsche Telekom deleted a description, previously available on its website, of its process for handling government demands for user information. This is particularly worrying for users of the company’s subsidiary in Hungary, where evidence suggests that the government spies on dissidents and journalists. Additionally, U.S. operating company T-Mobile has not clarified how it may respond to overbroad government demands for user information related to the prosecution of abortion seekers following the 2022 Supreme Court decision reversing abortion rights.

T-Mobile U.S. has suffered seven data breaches in the last four years. Despite a comparatively strong score on its responses to security breaches, Deutsche Telekom did not clearly explain how it would mitigate the harm done to users by these events.

Key takeaways

  • Deutsche Telekom’s strong privacy score was surpassed by Spain-based Telefónica. Though Deutsche Telekom did show some privacy improvements as one of only two companies to publish an algorithmic system development policy, it also removed a document explaining its process for handling government requests for user information.
  • The company remained among the least transparent European telecommunications companies we rank on policies affecting freedom of expression and information.
  • Deutsche Telekom lacked strong governance and oversight over human rights issues and showed no evidence of engaging with multi-stakeholder initiatives on human rights issues.

Key recommendations

  • Reinstate transparency about the process for responding to government demands for user information. Deutsche Telekom should replace the web-archived process description document it removed from its website or create a new one.
  • Improve governance to protect freedom of expression and information. Deutsche Telekom should institute senior-level oversight of this right and clarify its processes for responding to government and other third-party demands to block content or accounts.
  • Clarify the data inference policy. Deutsche Telekom should be fully transparent about the types of user data it infers for advertising and other purposes and should give users options to control what is inferred from their data.

Services evaluated:

  • Deutsche Telekom Germany (Prepaid mobile)
  • Deutsche Telekom Germany (Postpaid mobile)
  • Deutsche Telekom Germany (Fixed-line broadband)
  • Operating company evaluated: Deutsche Telekom GermanyFor telecommunications companies, the RDR Index evaluates relevant policies of the parent company, the operating company, and selected services of that operating company.
  • Market cap: $86.42 billion (as of November 4, 2022)
  • XETRA, based in Frankfurt: DTE
  • Read more about how stock structures can be a barrier to shareholder participation
  • Website: https://www.telekom.com

The 2022 Telco Giants Scorecard covers policies that were active on June 1, 2022. Policies that came into effect after June 1, 2022, were not evaluated for this scorecard.

Scores reflect the average score across the services we evaluated, with each service weighted equally.

  • Lead researchers: Anna Lee Nabors, Zak Rogoff

Changes since 2020

  • The German telecommunications giant removed a document from its website explaining its process for responding to government demands for user information.
  • Deutsche Telekom committed to performing regular, formal assessments of discrimination risks associated with its algorithmic systems, but did not provide sufficient details about the process.
  • Deutsche Telekom announced a separate policy governing the day-to-day implementation of its algorithmic systems, though it is difficult to access.
  • Deutsche Telekom lost points in the freedom of expression category because a document describing its process for responding to private requests for content restriction became outdated.

Scores since 2017

100%0%2017201820192020202244%34%35%
Most companies’ scores dropped between 2019 and 2020 with the inclusion of our new indicators on targeted advertising and algorithmic systems. To learn more, please visit our Methodology development archive.
Governance44%
Freedom of expression9%
Privacy49%

We rank companies on their governance, and on their policies and practices affecting freedom of expression and privacy.

Governance 44%

Deutsche Telekom’s governance policies did not address board-level oversight of digital rights issues (G2) or human rights impact assessments in key issue areas (G4b-c,e). The company published a report that partially addressed the need for due diligence on the use of algorithmic systems (G4d), but it did not clearly extend its human rights commitments to cover its use of these technologies (G1).

Freedom of expression 9%

Deutsche Telekom performed significantly worse on freedom of expression than on governance and privacy. The company disclosed nothing about its processes for responding to third-party demands (F5) or for restricting content or accounts based on either government (F6) or private requests (F7). The company also failed to clarify its process for responding to demands to shut down networks (F10), which gave it one of the lowest scores of the companies evaluated in this category.

Privacy 49%

Deutsche Telekom’s privacy score was the second highest in this ranking. It was one of only two companies to receive any credit on the accessibility of its algorithmic use policy due to its publication of guidelines on AI (P1b). It also had the highest score of any company on indicators related to the handling of user information (P3–P9). However, the company removed a policy regarding its process for responding to government demands for user information (P10a) and generally revealed less about how it responds to such demands (P10) than its European competitors.