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Corporate Responsibility

Sustainable products

Our products connect people, help conserve resources and improve medical care.

From agriculture and providing health care and electricity to industrial production, digital technologies help simplify processes and make them more efficient.  According to the SMARTer2030 study, these technologies could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by the year 2030 as well as reduce consumption of resources, stabilize power grids, simplify work processes and continue to improve medical care. That's where Deutsche Telekom comes in. We are committed to systematically leveraging the vast sustainability potential of state-of-the-art technologies, which is why we continuously work on innovative and future-oriented solutions.

Machines and products are becoming smarter. Cars are communicating with repair shops and smoke detectors inform the fire department themselves if there is a fire. Machine to machine communication, or M2M, has ushered in a new era of technological advancement. M2M is also an important growth sector for Deutsche Telekom because our high-performing network forms the basis for M2M solutions.

That gives our customers numerous advantages. The technology optimally synchronizes the work processes of the various customer devices and cars or even entire industrial plants. That improves productivity and helps reduce energy and resource consumption.

We also support the German government's Industry 4.0 initiative for maintaining Germany's competitiveness as a technology hub.

One example of how M2M can be used in logistics is the smartPORT logistics system employed at the Port of Hamburg. Trucks are equipped with tablet PCs that exchange data with one another through the cloud and that communicate with sensors at important junctions like cranes, bridges and access roads on the port grounds. The result is considerably reduced waiting and traffic times and precise loading. To sum it up: more productivity. And traffic that flows is also a valuable result in terms of the environment. M2M has already become a fixture in many business sectors.

Cities account for a large share of global CO2 emissions. Our aim is to use innovative solutions to help transform cities into smart urban spaces. Smart streetlights that turn on and off based on information from sensors reduce energy consumption and are just one module in our Smart City approach, which contributes to the sustainable development of cities thanks to modern ICT infrastructure.

There are many ways in which SmartHome can make life easier for our customers. It lets them control and monitor a number of household devices and reduce energy consumption, too. In order to create a multi-vendor smart home solution, Deutsche Telekom and other key players got together to create the open, multi-vendor QIVICON smart home platform on which any company, regardless of their industry or size, can offer their own solutions. This platform gives consumers the option to customize their own combination of different offers.

Deutsche Telekom is also working hard to drive digitization forward in agriculture. Smart technologies help farmers practice greater sustainability and master the numerous challenges they face every day.  Precise positioning data can be directly sent to the control systems of agricultural machines via the mobile communications network, for example. With this technology, a "connected plow" can automatically correct its course while in operation. That reduces fuel consumption and prevents unnecessary trips when sowing, fertilizing and harvesting.

The SMARTer2030 study states that using ICT in farming could cut CO2 emissions by around 2 billion metric tons and reduce water consumption by 250 trillion liters by the year 2030.

Pollination by insects is a key factor in worldwide food production. With the Magenta Bee Project, Deutsche Telekom is supporting more insect-friendly approaches to using many of the Group’s own green spaces. Planting, nesting aids, and adapted mowing schedules offer bees and other insects food and refuge. Connected beehives in selected spaces: thanks to digital sensors from BeeAndMe.com, the attending beekeeper can use an app to access information on the temperature, humidity, or weight of the beehive and therefore find out if the bees are doing well and if there is enough honey to harvest. This “Magenta honey” will be sold at the Group headquarters’ Love Magenta shop. The proceeds will be donated to the “Plant for the Planet” charity.
 

With cloud computing, our customers no longer need to be bothered with their own servers and storage media. Thanks to highly effective capacity utilization, our data centers require less hardware, which means less energy consumption. Compared to a customer running their own infrastructure, this solution reduces energy consumption by up to 80 percent.

Deutsche Telekom has been working together with others to expand digital health care in a number of pilot projects. Fast, secure exchange of information between doctors, patients and insurers helps patients and their families every day, enables care as close to home as possible and helps medical personnel reduce their workloads. That also cuts costs.

In Germany, for example, we are collaborating with Carus Consilium Sachsen GmbH, a subsidiary of the Dresden University Hospital, to create an interdisciplinary platform for providing medical care to local residents. This platform is connected to various participants including the Dresden Heart Center and makes it possible for medical staff to monitor patients at home using a telemedicine solution. Patient data is reviewed daily by "telenurses" and, in case of doubt, a doctor is immediately involved and consulted.

We also develop solutions that help our customers lead independent lives. Take the new smart-home emergency call system that we introduced in 2015. The system works using sensors installed in the home, which are in turn connected to the intelligent software of the emergency call system. The software is able to tell the difference between, say, a person bending down to pick something up and someone who has fallen and requires help. Upon identifying a real emergency situation, the system automatically uses a secure network to alert the control center.

Find out more

We wanted to know more about our products' current potential, which is why we collaborated with external experts to create an analysis that looks at the sustainability of our products and services. The analysis is based on the three pillars of sustainability – the environmental, social and financial advantages. The study shows that in 2014 we were already generating 37 percent of our total revenue in Europe with products and services that brought sustainability advantages. And we are planning to continue to add sustainable products and services to our portfolio.

Find out more in the CR report.

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