In the modern world, the telecommunication industry is increasing security for consumer data to prevent identity theft through hacking. It is the wish of the user to have personal information protected against any identity theft (Habib, Johansson & Shahmehri, 2012). The telecommunication industry is at the helm of collecting consumer information and keeping it away from leakage. To implement this, companies continue to conform to high standards of care. For example, the U.S. Telecommunication industry has put into place principles for continued privacy protection (Kshetri, 2013). Thus, this paper discusses the sustainability initiatives in the telecommunication industry by focusing on two social issues: customer privacy and data protection and access to telecommunication products and services.
Customer Privacy and Data Protection
According to Kshetri (2013), the motivation behind the effective customer privacy policy initiatives is to ensure transparency, respect for consumer choice, enhanced data security, and avoid a data breach. The objectives of customer privacy policy initiatives in data protection are to safeguard information gathered and stored against malicious damage, and improving the level of trust between the company and consumers (Jerome, 2013). The standard of commitment in data protection is satisfactory because telecommunication companies have invested by installing powerful servers and expensive cloud software to ensure privacy (Richards & King, 2014).
Richards and King (2014) add that developing a good customer privacy policy environment is challenging because it keeps changing and maintaining data privacy requires the company to be up to date with changing technology. In addition, hackers always make it hard to guarantee privacy of most customers because they penetrate the system and mine data. The commitment by telecommunication companies is satisfactory and meets the required threshold notwithstanding many challenges in the digital era (Kleist, Dull, & Tanner, 2014). This is seen due to massive infrastructure and incremental policies to ensure no loopholes in access to customer privacy exists. Thus, there is a need to ensure that telecommunication companies are dedicated in the protection of data and information through investment in technology to help protect their customers’ privacy.
The paper recommends that firms in the telecommunication sector should cooperate with governments to foster policy development and implementation to help improve the fight against unauthorized data access. Additionally, companies should work together in ensuring continuous research on security issues the industry. By funding these initiatives, it will be easier for the telecommunication industry to improve on data protection and customer privacy through sharing of information on how individual companies handle these challenges.
Access to Telecommunication Products and Services
According to Stark (2015), the number of consumers using mobile telephony has grown tremendously resulting in a logistical nightmare in the distribution of the goods and services. To solve these challenges and bring sustainability, companies have adopted massive digitization of their services and infrastructure investment. These initiatives help in managing exploding data traffic, increased to meet required capabilities. Besides, it helps rationalize products and service offered. The motivation behind the move is to improve the client experience significantly and evolve business models and their products (Greene, Brush & Brown, 2015).
Greene, Brush and Brown (2015) note that the objective of the sustainability actions is to increase the level of competition in the market and enhance the efficiency in which the products and services are delivered in the market. The commitment of these companies is excellent due to massive resources and infrastructure invested to support the initiative. However, the initiative has not been without challenges due to scarce resources and rocky transition. In some cases, the digital initiatives have faced sustainability issues and scattershot (Greene, Brush & Brown, 2015).
Therefore, companies have taken actions including adopting a focused approach to evaluate and determine which type of services to offer in the market. The aim is to capture existing real opportunities in the digital ecosystems (Arushanyan, Petersen & Finnveden, 2014). As such, there is a need for long and short-term objectives to help the industry mount sustainable digital initiatives in future. Firms in the industry should understand the evolving requirements of the consumers in the short term but in the future, there is a need to understand customized preferences and tastes and provide product and services based on the desires (Stark, 2015).
According to Espstein (2008), the reason for unsustainability in most businesses is caused by the massive production and consumption that causes damage to our environment. The result of this is catastrophic warming. The author also claims the life we live is unsustainable because of finite resources. This is true when applied in the telecommunication industry although not all aspects apply in the situation. As telecom industry continue to expand extensive resources is required to protect clients’ data and logistics of distributing the products and services in the market (Epstein, Buhovac & Yuthas, 2015).
Further, there are extensive resources required to enable sustainability. For example; the companies need to invest in infrastructures to boost their capability to deliver in real time. Data privacy also requires human resource capital and training that poses challenges are for many companies due to evolving technology and threats (Epstein, Buhovac & Yuthas, 2015).
Epstein Ideas on Client Privacy and Access to Products and Services
Some aspects of Espstein’s theory support the ideas and challenges of sustainability in the telecommunication industry. Firms in their effort to satisfy the market are facing resource challenges to a situation where they have to borrow in the market (Epstein & Buhovac, 2014). In the context of an organization, resources are finite but in the environment, the idea is not supported because there are institutions that help in financial matters.
The theory applies to groups that cause air pollution and environmental damage that is not the case in the sector. Most of the services offered have not environmental damage, but some products not all like phones have an effect on the environment (Epstein & Buhovac, 2014). After use, the products are disposed of without care because companies have not done awareness campaign initiatives to the consumers.
Conclusion
In essence, the communication industry has experienced immense growth over the year. However, the sector faces numerous sustainability issues including customer privacy and access to products and services. Increasing investment in technology to help in data protection will go a long way in improving customer satisfaction. Additionally, issues of sustainability and ensuring environmental protection are still a major focus in the growing telecommunication industry. Thus, companies should focus on service delivery and implementing that will see improved customer satisfaction and increased sustainability.
References
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Epstein, M. J., Buhovac, A. R., & Yuthas, K. (2015). Managing social, environmental and financial performance simultaneously. Long Range Planning, 48(1), 35-45.
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Greene, P. G., Brush, C. G., & Brown, T. E. (2015). Resources in small firms: an exploratory study. Journal of Small Business Strategy, 8(2), 25-40.
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Kleist, V. F., Dull, R. B., & Tanner, C. D. (2014). Secure information market: A model to support information sharing, data fusion, privacy, and decisions. Journal of Information Systems, 28(1), 269-285.
Kshetri, N. (2013). Privacy and security issues in cloud computing: The role of institutions and institutional evolution. Telecommunications Policy, 37(4), 372-386.
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