How Green is Your Telecom Company?

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British Telecom recently announced a huge step in the environmentally friendly direction and planned to build wind farms that will provide for 25% of the company’s power needs by 2016. [BTW, one of the biggest consumers of giant turbine blades is John Deere, the agricultural and industrial machinery manufacturer.]

The investment of about $500 million will result in a serious reduction of carbon emissions. BT uses 0.7% of all of the power consumed in the UK, so this is a significant amount of energy that promises to become carbon-free. 

Some telecommunications companies in the US are also joining in on the green cause with various strategies to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions.  I did some research to see just how the three largest American companies compare to BT. I looked at the three biggest telecom companies in the US namely Verizon , AT&T , and Qwest to see what steps they taking. I found that although some are taking the initiative and are working on energy-efficiency, the US companies are a long ways away from the leadership position that BT has set for itself and the industry. I compared the companies on the 5 categories below.

As the table shows, the USA companies pale in comparison to BT. All three of them are silent on at least one important dimension - Leadership, Commitments, Goals, Strategies are all key elements of an organization's seriousness about the issue.

As AT&T will have 10% of the energy they use in Austin TX come from wind farms, BT is going to have 25% of ALL THE POWER they use in the UK come from wind farms.  I searched all over the Internet for Qwest’s strategies and environmental policies, but found nothing. This leads me to believe that Qwest doesn't see the need. :-(

BT takes the green prize when it comes to green telecommunications among these four companies.