AT&T (News 
- Alert) has published its 2010 Sustainability Report, highlighting how the company is working on its own and in conjunction with others to have a positive impact on the community.
The report features personal stories about how AT&T is working with others. For example, it focuses on those stories that track and manage critical water shipments destined for Haiti earthquake victims.
To address the high school dropout crisis and help ensure students graduate prepared for the future challenges of continuing education and the workforce, the company launched AT&T Aspire, a $100 million initiative in 2008. Through the AT&T/Junior Achievement Worldwide Job Shadow Initiative, employees have dedicated more than 200,000 volunteer hours from fall 2008 through 2010 and volunteering is a key component of AT&T Aspire.
"In 2010 we began seeing tangible value to our world and our company from the multi-year investments we've been making. We'll continue to build upon this momentum and seek more shared value opportunities for business and society," said Charlene Lake, chief sustainability officer and senior vice president-public affairs at AT&T.
Offering students with the opportunity to team up with employees to learn more about career options and what it takes to be successful in today's workforce, more than 65,000 students have already benefited from the program. Employees also donate their time through AT&T Cares, the company's volunteer initiative. The community outreach activities, valued at more than $192 million, received 9 million hours of time through AT&T Cares in 2009.
In June 2010, the company announced that it would offer two mobile data plans for new iPad buyers. DataPlus will provide 200 MB of data for $15 per month (additional 200 MB chunks of data also cost $15), and DataPro, which provides 2 GBytes of data for $25 per month, with every additional GByte costing $10. If customers on the DataPlus plan exceeded 200 MBytes in a monthly billing cycle, they received an additional 200 MB of data usage.
Raju Shanbhag is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Raju’s articles, please visit his columnist page.
