Comcast

Comcast is a leader in community initiatives for providing universal and affordable access to digital technologies. Through its Internet Essentials Partnership Program, more than ten million people from low-income backgrounds have benefitted from affordable access to internet and subsidised or donated devices. The programme’s impact has also been verified by several third-party impact assessments. Comcast also provides funding to organisations that promote digital inclusivity for women and girls. Further, it offers products specifically designed for people with disabilities.

Comcast’s digital skills development programmes aim to improve media and digital literacy among low-income communities, teach children coding and train people from underrepresented and unemployed communities for technology jobs. Moreover, in 2020, the company initiated a partnership with various public and non-profit organisations to provide free internet access to students.

Comcast demonstrates high-level responsibility for cybersecurity through executive-level positions and committees. It also reports on government requests for personal information it receives. The company clearly explains how customers can report online harms to children and how its products can be used to control sensitive content for children.

Comcast is committed to open innovation, as evidenced by its efforts to share its code repositories through one platform and its financial support for researchers advancing the field of digital technology. Further, the company contributes to the tech innovation ecosystem through venture capital and start-up support, including assistance for social start-ups and start-ups founded by people from underrepresented groups. Comcast is also committed to reducing its environmental footprint.

Comcast can report the number of people with disabilities it employs as well as how it solicits feedback from people with disabilities in designing products and services. The company can also report metrics on its financial and in-kind contribution to programmes that address the gender digital divide, and the number of programme participants. Additionally, the company should disclose details on how the economic value it creates is distributed among its stakeholders.

Apart from its existing efforts in the area of skills development, Comcast can also focus on supporting digital skills programmes that can be applied to improving livelihoods. It can further improve its performance by disclosing information on its financial and in-kind contributions to its skills development programmes and the number of participants.

Despite Comcast disclosing information on accountability for information security, limited evidence was found on how the company manages this in practice. Comcast should provide evidence of internationally recognised information security certification and report on the number of data breaches it experiences. Additionally, the company should adopt a global privacy policy, which applies to all customers regardless of location. Comcast also has an opportunity to expand its existing support for child online safety by making a high-level commitment on the topic and integrating it in its operating policies at the group level.

Comcast can provide evidence of its support for sustainable, ethical and inclusive innovation. It can disclose whether it supports any non-profit or academic research on sustainability topics or whether it shares its data sets for the purpose of sustainability research. The company discloses the number of its research and development (R&D) facilities in the US. But it should expand its reporting by disclosing its R&D facilities globally, as well as the number of women it employs in tech and R&D roles, and how it applies ethics in its R&D activities.

Comcast commits to respecting human rights in a publicly available policy document. However, the company’s commitment to respect the ILO core labour rights can be stronger. For example, the company has no policy statement to indicate its commitment to respecting the rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining. Comcast has a grievance mechanism accessible to both workers and external stakeholders to raise human rights concerns and complaints. However, the company does not disclose a process to identify, assess and act on the salient human rights risks associated with its own operations and with its business relationships. Moreover, the company does not engage with stakeholders whose human rights could be impacted by its operations.

Comcast publicly commits to respecting worker health and safety, and it places health and safety expectations on its business relationships. However, the company makes no public statement to indicate that it does not require workers to work more than the regular and overtime hours. It is also not explicit in stating if it requires its business relationships to make this commitment. The company also does not provide relevant information on whether it pays its workers a living wage. Nor does it provide a commitment towards promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment. Comcast provides information on the number of employees in different employee categories based on diversity indicators such as gender, race and ethnicity, but it has an opportunity to also report employee numbers by age group.

Comcast has a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption, and it includes anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its business relationship contracts. Furthermore, Comcast’s reported tax strategy is only applicable to its UK operations and the company does not disclose its income tax payments in individual tax jurisdictions. The company discloses its approach to lobbying and political engagement. However, it has no public statement indicating that it does not make political contributions, and it discloses its lobbying expenditures for its US operations only.