France Telecom
Focus on a Member - October 2008
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| Gentiane Weil |
Gentiane Weil, Director Corporate Responsibility and Sustainable Development at France Telecom Group, discusses the role that telecommunications services can play in reducing the digital divide and moving towards a low carbon economy.
France Telecom group is a global telecommunications operator with more than 170 million customers across five continents. What are the key elements of your group-wide CSR strategy?
Our corporate responsibility strategy is based on the search for a fair balance between economic competitiveness, social and societal development, and concern for the environment. CSR challenges are integrated into our strategy and policies, which contributes to improving overall performance by furthering value creation.
Our activities play a key role in the economic development of industrialized and emerging countries and in opening up rural areas. They provide concrete solutions to the challenges set by climate change, dematerialization, and health and dependency. They also raise questions we need to answer, particularly as regards to child protection, data protection, and electromagnetic fields.
We have identified nine key issues, based on our stakeholders' main expectations among which: developing access for all, mobilising our staff, promoting responsible sourcing principles, responding to concerns about electromagnetic fields, and supporting community involvement.
How do you manage and monitor your CSR performance at international and country level?
Monitoring our economic, social and environmental performance is a key part of our CSR programme. Several dedicated tools as well as performance indicators allow us to steer the implementation of our initiative in each country where we are present.
Besides, we are involved in many international working groups such as UNI World Union Alliance or else, as far as the telecommunication sector is concerned, GeSi (Global e-Sustainable Initiative, that includes worldwide telecom operators and ICT suppliers), MPPI (Mobile Phone Partnership Initiative) and ETSI (standards organisation).
Moreover, we are signed several international commitments, such as the Global Compact and the ETNO (European Telecommunication Network Operators) environmental and sustainability charters.
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| The Hostonautes ® project helps children maintain ties with their school and family from seven hospitals in France |
Communications technology and services have become an integral part of consumer's daily lives. How do you see your responsibility towards consumers?
As a global telecommunications operator, we believe that we have a key role to play in battling the digital divide. That's why we are continually extending the coverage of our high-speed, fixed-line and mobile phone networks and are developing rate plans suited to low-income users, especially in emerging countries. We are also taking into account the specific needs of the erderly and disabled people in the design of our products and services.
Moreover, we provide innovative solutions to better respond to health and dependency challenges such as, for example, M2M applications allowing people to avoid permanent hospitalization or Columba by Orange which is a solution that improves heathcare for Alzheimer's patients thanks to geolocalization.
How do you address consumer concerns about new technologies and their impact on users and the environment?
We try to answer the questions that our activities raise. For instance, we promote a safe and responsible use of our services on our websites. Since we consider child protection as a priority, we provide a parental control service for mobile or PC Internet use and we have produced guides that give parents simple and effective tips for children to use their mobile phones and the Internet in safety.
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| Measuring electromagnetic fields near a base station |
As far as electromagnetic fields are concerned, we promote information sharing and dialogue, ensure international monitoring of scientific studies and apply international recommendations on exposure levels.
Data protection is also an important issue and we implement all that is necessary to ensure the integrity and confidentiality of the information entrusted to us.
As regards environmental footprint, we wish to help consumers reduce their impacts, by promoting more environmentally friendly products and services. For instance, we provide concrete solutions that promote collaborative work (such as Business Everywhere solution), optimize vehicle fleet management, consolidate and virtualize IT infrastructure, implement paper-free workflows and develop remote personal services.
While the communications technology industry is not a heavily polluting industry, no business can ignore the environmental impacts of their activities. How do you go about reducing your own environmental footprint?
Our activities have a limited impact on environment: in 2007, the total footprint of the ICT sector was about 2% of the estimated total emissions from human activity and telecoms are only a part of ICT which represents no more than 25% of these 2%. Nevertheless, we wish to set an example in reducing our environmental impacts.
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| Eco-design partnerships encourage to minimize the energy and materials used to manufacture products |
Our ambition is to reduce our greenhouse emissions by 20% between 2006 and 2020, by several means such as limiting our networks and buildings' energy consumption, reducing CO2 emissions from our fleet of vehicles and from business travel, increasing the proportion of energy from renewable sources, encouraging the development of telephone handsets that use less energy via our eco-design partnerships.
Beyond reducing our environmental footprint, we have a wider role to play. A recent report demonstrates that ICT could deliver up to a 15% reduction of business emissions in 2020, representing a value of € 644 billion savings. This saving in CO2e is more than five times the size of the sector's own footprint and its size demonstrates the important role an advanced communications platform can play in the transition to a low carbon economy.
Besides, we endeavour to optimise waste management. We put in place collection and treatment systems adapted to each type of waste (waste from the networks, waste from our offices and call centers or customer waste), taking into account regulations and local conditions and we ensure waste traceability up to its final treatment.
We also promote the processing of electric and electronic equipment at the end of its life. For instance, our customers' and employees' mobiles and accessories are collected then sent to treatment organisations. Reusable handsets are reconditioned and sold to new customers at attractive prices ; mobiles that can no longer be used are dismantled and the various components recycled at plants adapted to each type of material. In both cases, we thus help mobile phone get a second life!
About France Telecom Group
Orange is the key brand of France Telecom, one of the world's leading telecommunications operators. France Telecom serves close to 174 million customers in five continents of which two thirds are Orange customers. The Group had consolidated sales of 52,9 billion euros in 2007. France Telecom is the number three mobile operator and the number one provider of broadband Internet services in Europe and one of the the world leaders in providing telecommunication services to multinational companies.
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