How HIP Is Your Mobile Phone Provider?
BY MARA LUDMER and PAUL HERMAN

With a calendar, music player, internet access, and camera, nowadays your phone does a lot more than just make calls. That’s why your mobile phone should be just as HIP as you are. When choosing a cell phone service provider, it’s important to consider not just the features of your network, but also the company’s HIP (Human Impact + Profit) elements.

The service provider of the iPhone, AT&T, is a telecom leader in EARTH with a top-notch pilot program for wind power in Texas creating a savings of 230 million kWh (the equivalent annual electricity use of over 19,000 households) last year. This conservation beats out Verizon’s 16.5 million kWh savings (even adjusting for ATT being about 25% larger in revenue). It also significantly exceeds Sprint’s “plan to build a team to investigate issues relating to the environment,” or MetroPCS’s lack of any reported eco-savings or plans communicating to do so. Which company do you think is best prepared for another energy crisis?

AT&T and Verizon are neck and neck across EQUALITY. AT&T features one of the strongest supplier diversity networks in the world, purchasing more than $1 billion annually in materials from firms owned by women, minority, and disabled-veterans. AT&T and Verizon each employ more than 40% female employees and more than 35% ethnic employees, serving as a model of diversity in the workforce and poised to tap into new markets by thinking like their customers, and launching new solutions to serve them. Sprint and MetroPCS lag behind, offering little information on employee diversity, and Sprint’s Board of Directors is composed entirely of white men ““ even in 2009. It’s doubtful that this exactly mimics their customer base, employee diversity or their supplier base.

Verizon heads up the WEALTH category with the most lucrative compensation plans, paying its 223,900 employees typically much more than the industry average (sometimes up to $10,000 more), according to public sources. It’s not always easy to decipher this though ““ as companies do not always reveal total compensation across the whole firm. For consumers, MetroPCS offers competitive pricing with its pre-paid plans, which is the fastest growing category of the wireless market.

Using the HIP Scorecard methodology, the four largest publicly-listed companies in the wireless industry are listed below. More than 30 metrics go into the HIP scores, and they are used in evaluating these companies for the HIP investment indices.

How HIP Is Your Provider?
(HIP scores incorporate 30+ metrics and
weighted by business value and reliability)

Name (ticker)         HIP Score
AT&T (T)                             42%
Verizon (VZ)             45%
Sprint (S)                             39%
MetroPCS (PCS)   27%

Disclosure: HIP Investor Inc. analyzes publicly listed companies for its own research, for investors and for inclusion in its HIP indices. HIP Investor and its clients may hold a position in these firms, including part of the HIP 100 Index. This overview is intended to demonstrate the value of sustainability  and how it links to  shareholder value overall, and is not intended as an investment recommendation. This is not an offer of securities.