Citizenship and Sustainability
Overview
We lead the way in innovation and technology and apply developments to make a sustainable difference in society. At AT&T, we're always looking ahead, committed to developing innovations that can make a sustainable difference in our local communities and around the world.
Celebrating Innovation, Adapting Technology for People
AT&T helped introduce the telephone to the masses — and we've been driving communications innovation ever since. From Alexander Graham Bell's historic call to Watson to creating the nation's fastest 3G network, our technologies have changed the way people live, work and play.
As the innovation engine behind AT&T's world-class technology, the scientists and engineers of AT&T Labs continue to develop promising new products and services.
A Culture of Innovation
Today, AT&T Labs has a long history of innovation and is credited with the introduction of revolutionary technologies such as the telephone, the transistor and the solar cell. The more than 1,300 scientists and engineers of AT&T Labs continue to build on this legacy by pioneering new technologies.
Every day, our award-winning teams are working to deliver innovative applications and services that will automate and streamline the way customers connect to and interact with the world.
Adapting Technology for People
AT&T is committed to great customer service, and one way we're able to maintain that is with the knowledge and understanding of customers gained through the AT&T Labs' Human Factors Group. The
fundamental goal of the Human Factors Group is to do our learning in the lab, rather than after the service is deployed to tens of millions of customers. In fact, sometimes the learning occurs years before a product is offered to customers.
A part of AT&T Labs, our Human Factors Group includes 19 technical staff members who specialize in human factors engineering and conduct customer research, analysis, design and usability testing. Their goal is to help make AT&T products and services both useful for and usable by all of our customers.
Applying Innovation to Address Environmental Sustainability Challenges
AT&T Labs has always had its eye on the future. And it's with this forward-looking focus that we're working to create a cleaner, more sustainable tomorrow. We're committed to applying our investments, research and innovation to pressing environmental issues.
Exploring Data Center Energy Consumption
AT&T Labs has been at the forefront of the technological revolution. And with the explosive growth of the communications frontier, we recognize that growing demand for our products makes data center efficiency a major challenge.
Widespread research has examined ways to better use IT assets and conserve energy — without compromising computer performance or customer needs. The majority of this research has focused on the physical infrastructure of the data center, such as rack arrangements and power distribution.
While this research will likely lead to significant energy improvements, AT&T Labs researchers are also working on a more comprehensive approach to data center efficiency, looking not only at the physical components but also at the ways IT assets can be optimized at the system level to be more energy efficient.
The importance of this research is not limited to large-scale data centers. By understanding what functions are the most expensive in terms of energy consumption and heat dissipation, AT&T Labs aims to create best practices for the development of energy-efficient software, especially the kind that may not just run on big servers in a highly conditioned data center. These findings may be applicable to other devices and appliances, such as hand-held devices like the iPhone, where energy-efficient application software will help deliver faster execution while preserving battery life.
Applying Technology to Protect Wildlife and Wild Lands Around the World
Applying the same software used to maintain resilient telecommunication networks, AT&T Labs researchers are making the environment more resilient and helping protect rare animals. This "Machine Learning" software, which is available online at no charge for nonprofit and research use, has been downloaded thousands of times — from about 60 different countries — for conservation efforts around the world.
In addition to helping animals in Madagascar, other techniques for designing reliable communications networks are helping protect rare vegetation from the impacts of climate change. AT&T Labs researchers are also helping to design safe migratory corridors for rare mountain plant species in South Africa that are threatened by global warming.
Click here to watch our video about this work on YouTube.
Fostering Innovation At Leading Universities
We know that we don't have all the answers. But we believe that collaborating with some of the brightest minds in academia will get us closer. That's why, for more than 100 years, we've been teaming up with research teams from some of the world's leading universities.
We are actively working with researchers at more than 29 top universities, including Carnegie Mellon University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Georgia Institute of Technology, on joint research ventures.
Through our Virtual University Research Initiative, we fund educational expenses of students working on their Ph.D. dissertations in areas of interest to AT&T. And for more than 35 years, the AT&T Labs Fellowship Program and its precursors have supported under-represented minority and women doctoral students in key disciplines.
Each year, we highlight collaboration with the annual AT&T Labs University Collaborations Symposium. Here, AT&T Labs researchers, university professors and interns gather to share current joint research projects, discuss progress and make plans for future endeavors.
We also foster innovation at leading universities by supporting environmental research. For the last 14 years, AT&T has invested globally in research projects that study the intersection of community needs and AT&T's business interests.
The AT&T Technology and Environment Awards Program provides up to three awards of $25,000 to academic research teams at universities across the country. These grants are to fund research to advance our knowledge of how the environment is impacted by Information and Communications Technology (ICT), especially those products and services in which AT&T is directly involved.
Applying Innovation to Address Social Challenges
At AT&T, we're constantly looking for opportunities to apply our research and technological advancements to better society. This is particularly true in the area of health care — increasing access to health care and improving quality of patient care, while also cutting costs.
Expanded availability of high speed Internet access, coupled with the ability of secure virtual networks to address the different performance needs of medical applications, will fundamentally change how medical care is delivered. The prospect: better health care for more people delivered at a lower cost.
AT&T is committed to driving innovations in health care technology. And we're not alone in our efforts.
As a member of the Continua Health Alliance, we've joined forces with companies such as Bayer, Cisco, GE, IBM and Novartis to bring down the cost of health care. We're also a founding member of Better Health Care Together Coalition with the CWA and other major companies and employee unions.
AT&T Remote Monitoring services are just one way we're improving patient care. We're currently trialing wireless devices that record a patient's health information — from the comfort of their home — and send the data to their doctor, regardless of location.
Remote monitoring provides an innovative way to use our communications backbone to help families monitor older relatives or family members with chronic illnesses who are living alone.
We've also teamed up with Covisint, a subsidiary of Compuware Corp., and Microsoft Corp. on a major eHealth initiative — a nationwide information exchange — to enhance the health care experience for patients and practitioners alike.
The new eHealth information exchange is a revolutionary approach designed to reduce costs and improve the quality of care while putting patients in control of their electronic health records. It allows consumers using Microsoft HealthVault a software- and service-based platform for storing and accessing personal health information to share information with authorized physicians and health care providers connected to AT&T Healthcare Community Online.
To learn more about AT&T solutions for healthcare, click here.