Ethical buyer's guide to mobile phone networks

This is a free buyer's guide from Ethical Consumer, the UK's leading alternative consumer organisation. We research the social and environmental records of companies.

More detailed versions of this guide are available. See the links at the bottom of the page.

Best Buys as of January 2008

As our ratings are constantly updated, it is possible that company ratings on the ethiscore website may have changed since this report was written.

Overall Best Buy is the Phone Co-op but it's not the cheapest around and remember it piggybacks on T-Mobile's network.
Other Best Buys are Virgin, which piggybacks on Orange and O2 (for its fairly mature approach to environmental reporting). O2 operates its own mobile phone network.

Brand	Rating
Phone Co-op mobile phone network	13.5
Virgin mobile phone network	11.5
T-mobile mobile phone network	10.5
Talk Talk mobile phone network	10
O2 mobile phone network	9.5
BT Mobile network	8.5
Vodafone mobile phone networks	8
Orange mobile phone network	5.5
3 mobile phone networks	4.5

The higher the rating the more ethical the brand. This whole scorecard was last updated from our database on 14 October 2009 but some individual company ratings may have changed since then. Up to the minute information can be seen by subscribers using Ethiscore.
Learn more about our ratings.

There's now more choice for ethical consumers as networks have opened up. Companies can now buy airtime from existing mobile operators, effectively piggybacking on their networks. The following brands operate this way: Phone Co-op (T-Mobile), Virgin (Orange) and Talk Talk (O2).

Only O2 (owned by Telefonica) receives a best rating from us for its environmental reporting. Vodafone was the recipient of a UK-government grant to pilot and launch a mobile banking scheme in Kenya, called M-PESA. The scheme provides people who can't afford — or are too remote to access — a bank account, the facility to transfer or receive money. Whilst a great initiative, it's highly unlikely that Vodafone would have taken the move without the government funding.

Standing out in our ratings with its particularly poor ethiscore is the "3" brand. It's owned by Hong-Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing's Cheung Kong group. Various interests include oil and gas exploration, oil pipelines and refineries and a shipping port in turmoil-ridden Burma.

Sorry. No downloadable research report available for this product.

4 comments so far...

Re: Buyer's guide to the most ethical mobile phone networks

Orange outsource jobs to India taking money from the UK but not investing back into the economy. Does this report take into consideration those issues. In the current economic climate surely being ethical should include supporting the country that you are operating in.

Ethical Consumer replies: We don't consider outsourcing in itself under our ethical criteria,what we do is track workers'rights performance of companies and their policies governing their supply chains.

By J Davies on 10/06/2009 12:29

Re: Buyer's guide to the most ethical mobile phone networks

Hi, It's interesting to see that Phone Co-op are at the top of the list when accoriding to their website "All our mobile services use Three's ever-expanding network". they must have moved away from t-mobile. http://www.thephone.coop/residential/mobile-tariffs

By Dan on 24/08/2009 14:48

Re: Buyer's guide to the most ethical mobile phone networks

I'm disappointed that there is no downloadable research report available for this. Given the amount of people that have mobiles I'd say it is needed.

By Adie on 31/12/2009 07:24

Re: Buyer's guide to the most ethical mobile phone networks

The mobile phone networks report was only a short one, and everything we published in the mag can be seen here. The only further info we currently have on networks is on the www.ethiscore.org site where the company scores are updated daily and you can see the categories that the companies were criticised in. You need to be a subscriber to see this report on the ethiscore site.
We are working on an update of mobile phone handsets and networks for the next issue of Ethical Consumer (Issue 123) which will be out at the beginning of February. There will be a downloadable research report available for that report.

By Jane Turner on 07/01/2010 11:40

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