Who made the biggest gains, lost the most ground?

By Jie Zhang

Companies based in emerging markets demonstrated the strongest year-over-year progress overall while most companies in Europe stagnated, or even declined.

South Africa’s MTN posted the greatest score improvement this year, gaining 11.42 points, followed by Mexico’s América Móvil, whose score increased by 8.47 points. Both MTN and América Móvil improved the transparency of their policies significantly, and this played a big role in their advancement. The two companies published their first-ever transparency reports, in 2020^[1] and 2022 respectively, the first companies to do so in Africa and Latin America. In these reports, the companies explained their processes for managing government demands for shutdowns, content or accounts restrictions, and user information. MTN’s transparency report also included some relevant data about these demands, such as the number of shutdown orders the company received.

MTN and América Móvil surpassed France's Orange to take sixth and seventh place in this year's ranking for the first time –a milestone for telcos from emerging markets.

As a result of these improvements, MTN and América Móvil surpassed France’s Orange to take sixth and seventh place, respectively, in this year’s ranking for the first time –a milestone for telecommunications companies from emerging markets. The top six in RDR’s telco ranking have traditionally been European and U.S. companies. This development highlights the significance of transparency reports for ensuring accountability to users and to the public. They were the only telco companies headquartered in emerging markets to release one. MTN also improved its stakeholder engagement score by becoming the only African telco to join the Global Network Initiative (GNI), the primary multi-stakeholder organization dedicated to human rights in the tech and telecom sectors.

Qatar’s Ooredoo and the UAE’s e& (formerly Etisalat) also made some progress. For the first time, Ooredoo mentioned, in its annual report, “safeguarding human rights,” though the wording of the commitment was vague. Technology and investment group e& provided users with some information about how to protect themselves from cybersecurity threats. But their improvements still did not move the two companies up from the bottom of our ranking, where they’ve been since we began evaluating them. They continued to disclose little about their policies and practices related to freedom of expression and privacy.

European companies’ scores stagnated this year, with the exception of Spain’s Telefónica. Although the company has been ranked first among telcos since the 2019 RDR Corporate Accountability Index, it continued to improve, with the third-biggest score increase (5.98 points) this year. Telefónica expanded the scope of its human rights risk assessments and clarified that it does not respond to private requests for censorship or for user information. Telefónica also established a user transparency center for Movistar, its mobile and fixed broadband service, to help its subscribers navigate and manage their data in one place. Despite these steps, Telefónica still has a lot of room to improve its transparency, such as by sharing the volume and nature of content, advertisements, and accounts restricted to enforce the company rules. The scores of other European telcos—Orange, Norway’s Telenor, and the U.K.’s Vodafone—declined slightly.

Several legal and political developments brought about new challenges this year for telecommunication companies. As providers of key infrastructure requiring government licenses, telcos are easily influenced by governments. This year, both Telenor and Ooredoo had to exit the Myanmar market due the difficulties of operating within the deteriorating political environment following the 2021 coup in which the military removed the country’s elected civilian leaders. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that had guaranteed the right to an abortion nationwide. The most recent decision not only threatens Americans’ reproductive rights but has far-reaching impacts on their privacy rights. Data that tech companies, including telcos, collect from users, including search history, messages, and geolocation data, could be weaponized against abortion seekers as “evidence” by law enforcement. U.S. tech companies, including AT&T, have been slow in disclosing policies to address these risks.