Our vision is to lead the industry in responding to public concerns about mobile phones, masts and health by demonstrating leading edge practices and encouraging others to follow.
We have a Group EMF (electromagnetic fields) Board that includes representatives from some of our local operating companies and key functional areas. This board monitors public concerns, helps local operating companies to provide public information and advice and reviews the available information about mobile phones, masts and health. Our policies and strategies in this area are set accordingly. The Group EMF Board has set a number of strategic goals:
- Ensure the health and safety of the general public, our customers, our employees and business partners
- Engage stakeholders in an open and transparent dialogue to address health concerns
- Work to resolve scientific uncertainty
- Play a leading role in the mobile industry’s management approach
- Implement a global strategy which recognises the significance of local concerns and cultural and legal requirements. We have EMF leaders in each local operating company to ensure this.
As part of our wider management of corporate responsibility, we have also committed to set targets, track and report stakeholder opinion on how responsibly Vodafone is acting regarding mobile phones, masts and health. We commissioned a global survey of expert views on how seriously we take these responsibilities, and plan to improve stakeholder opinion using the results as a baseline. We will repeat the survey regularly to monitor our progress, and publish the results in our annual corporate responsibility report.
We fund independent scientific research into the priority areas identified by the World Health Organisation. To ensure independence, we do not fund studies directly, but through national research programmes and funding organisations such as the Research Association for Radio Applications in Germany (FGF) and the GSM Association.
We have committed more than €9 million to support independent scientific research into mobile phones, masts and health since 1999.