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Responsible Supply Chain

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Setting expectations for suppliers to advance sustainable practices throughout our value chain.

Global Reporting Initiative Standard Disclosures: 2-6 Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures: Governance; strategy; risk management; metrics & targetsLast Updated: April 8, 2026

Click through to learn about our 2025 impact in action. 

Our Approach

Our Approach

We work with more than 20,000 suppliers globally1 to enable a resilient, reliable and geographically diverse supply chain.2

Aligning Around Shared Standards

We seek suppliers that share our commitment to strict ethical and environmental standards. Our guidelines are conveyed through our Principles of Conduct for Suppliers (Supplier Principles), which align with international standards bodies such as the International Labour Organization, and include standards surrounding discrimination and harassment, as well as human rights issues like maximum working hours for employees.

We set expectations for adhering to the Supplier Principles through our Sustainability & Citizenship contract clause included in our contract agreements. We also expect suppliers to hold their subcontractors to the same principles and require that both comply with all applicable laws and regulations. Suppliers must verify alignment to our Supplier Principles through a self-attestation process every 18 to 24 months. To promote compliance, we also survey a subset based on risk level. Supplier risk level, and subsequently survey frequency, is determined with a high-risk activities questionnaire completed by our sourcing managers in cooperation with the relevant AT&T departments.

Environmental, Health & Safety (EHS) Expectations

We expect suppliers to have in place rigorous EHS policies and demonstrate robust practices, and to operate in a manner consistent with our corporate responsibility practices. Suppliers must provide safe, healthy workplaces that meet relevant standards, laws, rules and regulations. They must also agree to share appropriate health and safety information and training with employees.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Expectations

Our Supplier Artificial Intelligence Requirements outline our expectations for suppliers and their subcontractors when creating and using AI tools, systems, solutions and activities on AT&T’s behalf. This includes verifying suppliers are responsible for any outcomes generated by AI, with careful oversight of the data used, goals set and algorithms deployed, and a commitment to upholding the highest ethical standards at all times.

Promoting Responsible Procurement

We embed sustainability-oriented considerations into our sourcing decisions by:

  • Adding sustainability clauses to requests for proposals and agreements.
  • Training sourcing managers on our Sustainability Principles.
  • Updating sourcing managers on the sustainability performance of existing suppliers.

Through our due diligence process, we screen potential suppliers prior to contract execution using an onboarding questionnaire. During this screening process, we consider items including business relevance and country- and sector-specific risks. Based on their responses and the presence of any high-risk indicators, we deploy risk mitigation measures such as contract language and other controls. We also perform business- and risk-specific compliance monitoring as appropriate.

Annual JAC Audits

We maintain membership and board member status with the Joint Alliance for CSR (JAC), which we leverage to inform our supply chain human and labor rights efforts, including modern slavery. We participate in JAC’s collaborative audit initiative, which conducts annual supplier audits with globally recognized independent auditors. JAC uses a common audit framework, based on the SA8000 and ISO 41001 standards, that covers topics such as child labor, forced labor, health and safety, freedom of association, nondiscrimination, disciplinary practices, working hours, wages and compensation, environmental practices and business ethics. JAC also shares resources, including audit results and corrective actions, among members to promote best practices.

JAC audits include a coordinated on-site audit, followed by appropriate corrective actions to improve sustainability- and social responsibility-related conditions. Any corrective actions are managed and implemented with the relevant suppliers to resolution. If a factory receives a result that raises concern, it may be reaudited after one year.

In 2025, JAC audited 151 factory locations (of which 127 were JAC-led audits and 24 were Responsible Business Alliance [RBA]-led Validated Assessment Program [VAP] audits),3 including 50 at AT&T suppliers’ facilities. AT&T conducted a combined four audits of our suppliers’ factory locations.

Of the 127 JAC-led audits, 93% resulted in corrective actions and mutually agreed-upon corrective action plans. 87% of corrective actions were in the following areas: health & safety (50%), working hours (15%), environmental practices (12%) and business ethics (10%).

Understanding Ongoing Supplier Performance

Verifying that suppliers uphold our expectations is crucial to building a responsible supply chain, and we maintain various processes to assess supplier performance. We regularly screen suppliers against governmental restricted parties lists to verify we do not engage with sanctioned individuals or entities. We also use our ongoing due diligence process to monitor contracted suppliers to verify we do not conduct business with entities that pose risks to our operations, brand or reputation.

Suppliers and their employees can contact AT&T regarding corporate responsibility standards or noncompliance concerns at inquiry@attsuppliers.com.

Supplier Environmental Sustainability

AT&T encourages suppliers to reduce their environmental impact, target energy efficiencies and respond to our sustainability-related information requests. We also support them in setting emission reduction targets to help reduce their own energy consumption and emissions, as well as our value chain emissions.

We also use EcoVadis to assess supplier performance across four themes: environment, labor and human rights, ethics and sustainable procurement. EcoVadis is our preferred tool for sustainability reporting, giving us increasingly holistic insights into supplier sustainability performance.

Each year, we engage strategic suppliers representing at least 80% of our supplier spend through assessments to understand their environmental sustainability performance. We also request information about emissions allocated specifically to AT&T, product-level emissions data and areas for collaboration.

For more on how we manage Scope 3 emissions, see our Efficiency & Emissions issue brief.

Ethical Labor Expectations

Modern Slavery

We are committed to assessing and addressing modern slavery and human trafficking risks within our operations and supply chain. We continuously assess the nature and extent of our risk exposure by reviewing supply chain areas that may be at higher risk.

Employees in specific job functions are trained on modern slavery and human trafficking risk and conduct reputational risk due diligence on new and existing vendors. When information that could be a risk factor is identified, it is brought to supply chain leadership and appropriate legal teams for review.

Read more about our efforts in our Modern Slavery Statements.

Conflict Minerals

This year, we also made changes to our Supplier Principles to better enforce our policy on conflict minerals. AT&T is not a manufacturer, but we are concerned about the use of conflict minerals. We expect that the products we purchase will not contain conflict minerals that directly or indirectly support non-state actors engaged in armed conflict or exploitative mining practices or contribute to human rights violations in conflict-affected regions. Suppliers are expected to share this commitment and to exercise due diligence in their sourcing practices in accordance with applicable conflict mineral laws and regulations.

We reserve the right to audit our suppliers to verify compliance. Where noncompliance issues are identified, we work with suppliers to remedy them, suspending or terminating contracts with those that fail to demonstrate a commitment to this or any of our Supplier Principles.

Supplier Inclusivity & Small Business Support

AT&T drives economic growth and expands opportunity by supporting supplier inclusivity and small business development. Since 1968, we have been one of the first U.S. corporations to build dedicated programs that fuel local employment, strengthen regional economies and create competitive opportunities for a wide range of suppliers. By strengthening supplier outreach and pairing it with targeted small business engagement, we bolster economic development within local communities while building a robust and competitive supplier base. Our supplier engagement efforts center on four pillars:

  • Supplier Advocacy: Prioritizes awarding supplier contracts based on competitive value, which verifies that all suppliers are evaluated based on their ability to deliver quality products and services that meet AT&T’s standards and deliver value to its customers. Our sourcing organization, business unit partners and prime suppliers work closely to identify opportunities to consider a broad range of suppliers.
  • Prime Supplier Program: Leverages our strong relationships with our strategic suppliers to broaden the pool of subcontractors considered based on the quality and value of their offerings.
  • Small Business Engagement: Focuses on furthering our commitment to economic growth by supporting procurement from small local suppliers. By doing so, we aim to bolster economic development within local communities and enhance our commodity areas.
  • Supplier Financing Program: Enables suppliers to leverage the credit power of AT&T. Our suppliers benefit by freeing up additional cash flow at a low interest rate that many are not eligible to receive at their financial institutions.

Learn more about AT&T Supplier Inclusivity.

Supply Chain Resilience

In recent years, global supply chains have faced unprecedented disruptions and a continuously evolving geopolitical landscape, highlighting the criticality of supply chain resilience. We are proactively addressing and working to mitigate risks by improving our supply chain visibility and risk mitigation practices in collaboration with suppliers. These efforts include:

  • Geopolitical Risk Management: We are collaborating with suppliers to discuss proactive mitigation plans, mapping our exposure to geopolitical risks such as evolving trade policies and tariffs and monitoring real-time supplier disruption alerts to quickly assess and address identified issues.
  • Supplier Risk Assessment: We leverage industry and supplier data to holistically understand potential supplier risk to AT&T. We use data to increase our visibility into supplier financial health, assess mission-critical suppliers and gauge the impacts of key inputs, such as raw materials and commodities, to our supply chain.
  • Supply Chain Mapping: Through an extensive data collection program, we are mapping and increasing our understanding of where our suppliers concentrate the manufacturing of key products and components. With this improved visibility, we continually evaluate our supplier base to help balance costs with risk mitigation and resilience.
  • AI Applications: We are leveraging best‑in‑class AI and agentic automation across procurement and supply chain to improve decision‑making, increase operational efficiency and strengthen resilience. Through advanced contract intelligence, sourcing automation and real‑time logistics optimization, we are reducing manual effort while enabling faster, more consistent execution across the procurement and supply chain teams.
  • Diversification: We continue to diversify our supply chain to mitigate risks and help promote supply chain resilience.

Responsible Supply Chain Governance

Our supply chain is wide-reaching and complex; we maintain an oversight structure that is equally comprehensive, including:

  • Board of Directors: Provides the highest level of oversight of AT&T activities, as deemed appropriate, including those of our Global Supply Chain (GSC) organization.
  • Senior Executive Vice President (SEVP) — Transformation & Supply Chain: Holds top managerial responsibility for supply chain management. Also, the Senior Vice President - GSC, a direct report to the SEVP, serves as a member of the Corporate Responsibility Governance Council. The council is led by our Head of Corporate Responsibility and comprises senior executives and officers responsible for business areas most closely linked to our current corporate responsibility priorities.
  • GSC Team: Manages daily supply chain activities, including requests for proposals and quotes, negotiations, contracting, contingency planning and ongoing supplier management and evaluation.
  • Risk Management Team: Responsible for preserving assets and shareowner value by minimizing the financial effects of accidental losses, including supply chain-related activities. Also responsible for establishing insurance requirements for contractors and vendors and reviewing insurance clauses within contracts.

Impact in Action

Our 2025 Impact in Action

In 2025, we spent more than $60 billion on goods and services worldwide. 

Topic Goal Progress
Sustainable Sourcing Standards Annually engage suppliers representing at least 80% of our spend on their sustainability performance by the end of 2025.4 Reached 83% of spend, exceeding our goal for the fifth consecutive year.

Advancing Action for the Planet

We successfully created a Personal Learning Environment (PLE) class on sustainability and made it available to all AT&T employees; additionally, sustainability training has been integrated into the new hire training program for sourcing managers. The PLE covers topics such as evolving sustainability regulations and ways AT&T helps suppliers reduce their environmental impacts.

Through our expanded engagement with EcoVadis in 2025, we again reached our goal to annually engage suppliers representing at least 80% of our spend on their sustainability performance. This is the fifth year in a row that we have met this goal. Moving forward, we will continue to strive to meet this 80% engagement metric on an annual basis.

In 2025, we continued our copper reclamation efforts as we transition to more efficient fiber and wireless services. Through copper reclamation across our wireline operations, we drive operational efficiency by recovering valuable materials, optimizing distribution and asset management and promoting responsible handling from field collection through final disposal.

For more information on our copper reclamation efforts, you can view our Circularity issue brief.

Supplier Engagement

In 2025, we engaged suppliers through a variety of channels.

To strengthen our supply chain resilience, we hosted a series of webinars guiding suppliers on preparing for severe weather events and using the ClimRR platform to assess infrastructure vulnerabilities and prioritize critical investments. Multiple representatives attended from 20 of our top suppliers, representing over $5 billion in supplier spend.

We also published a case study on network sustainability with Ericsson that demonstrates how large-scale collaboration and enhanced supply chain practices are helping us decarbonize our operations and build a more resilient, responsible network ecosystem.

Small Business Impact

In 2025, AT&T spent nearly $3.5 billion5 with small businesses across the U.S., reinforcing our commitment to an inclusive, resilient and robust supplier base. We continue to increase our spend and overall engagement with small business, recognizing the critical role they play in driving job creation, strengthening regional economies and expanding economic opportunity in the communities we serve. By intentionally growing our small-business spend, we help extend the benefits of our supply chain beyond our operations and support economic growth nationwide.

Related Key Topics

thermometer Efficiency & Emissions
  • Lowering Emissions
  • Building Resilience
  • Seizing Business Opportunities
 shield Environment, Health & Safety Compliance
  • EHS Framework
  • Governance
  • Employee Awareness
 government building Ethics & Integrity
  • Code of Business Conduct
  • Employee Awareness
  • Anti-Bribery Anti-Corruption
 droplet Natural Resources
  • Biodiversity
  • Water Management
  • Paper Procurement
View All Key Topics
  1. In non-embargoed countries.
  2. Our Global Supply Chain (GSC) organization manages the supply chain of AT&T operations (U.S. and international). This represents the largest and most complex portion of our supply chain. Because of the scale of this work, this issue brief reflects the efforts of GSC unless otherwise noted. Supplier inclusivity metrics represent the effort of our entire U.S. operations. AT&T’s Supplier Inclusivity team administers the Supplier Inclusivity Program on behalf of AT&T affiliates (herein referred to as “AT&T”).
  3. JAC recognizes Validated Assessment Program (VAP) audits carried out under the Responsible Business Alliance (RBA) initiative as materially equivalent to JAC audits. As is the guidance for all JAC members, AT&T aims to conduct audits of at least five suppliers each year by an independent auditing body. Corrective action plans are provided for any adverse findings identified during an audit. If there are no adverse findings, there are no corrective action plans.

  4. This goal is focused on network, consumer equipment and corporate services spend. 

  5. The small business status of listed entities is identified through a combination of official agency certifications and criteria, U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) registrations, supplier self-identifications, and proprietary data enrichment processes. While we strive for accuracy, AT&T does not independently verify the size status or representations provided by suppliers to third-party organizations.