T-Mobile committed $500,000 to clean energy initiatives through its investment in The Nature Conservancy, the third largest wireless carrier in the United States said Wednesday. The company challenged Verizon and AT&T to join it in its efforts to completely transition to renewable energy sources by mid-2021, vowing to double its investments in The Nature Conservancy if either one of its rivals does so. While both AT&T and Verizon have been pursuing green energy in recent times and are expected to eventually use it to power the entirety of their operations, both are understood to be unwilling to publicly agree to follow T-Mobile in order to avoid giving additional publicity to the company whose brand under CEO John Legere largely revolves around the promise that the company will push the rest of the industry to change. Despite its proposal being beneficial to the society as a whole, AT&T and Verizon would simply be strengthening their rival’s brand image by following it publicly, some industry watchers believe.
T-Mobile recently made a major investment in its own renewable energy sources, claiming it will go 100-percent green by June 1, 2021. The mobile service provider also joined RE100, a global consortium of large companies committed to going completely green in the near future. Its challenge to AT&T and Verizon also included a provision for a case in which both of its larger rivals join its efforts, which is a scenario that would see T-Mobile triple its initial donation to The Nature Conservancy. The beneficiary of the challenge is an Arlington County, Virginia-based charity whose mission statement is to “conserve the lands and waters on which all life depends.”
T-Mobile has a rather successful year behind it, having generated $4.5 billion in profit on a revenue of $40.6 billion in 2017. The firm managed to grow its business across the vast majority of relevant metrics over the last year and analysts seem optimistic about its ability to maintain that momentum. Arguably its biggest defeat in 2017 came in the form of its prolonged merger talks with Sprint which fell through due to their parent companies’ unwillingness to provide the other party with the control of the combined entity. Many industry watchers were highly critical of that development, claiming such stubbornness led the network operators to give up on tens of billions of added value in the form of synergies.