There's been a lot of publicity over the past couple of weeks about the collection of personal information on mobile devices and, in particular, location information. It is a given that operators need to know where you are so they can route calls to and from your device and generate a bill. But, as Knowledge Center mobile and wireless analyst J. Gerry Purdy discusses here, what has been less clear is what other information operators collect and for what purpose.
While mobile users may be naturally wary of having software report on
what their cell phone is up to, there is an equally natural expectation that
network quality, device performance and customer care meet the highest
standards.
Carrier IQ has balanced its need for information with the users' privacy expectation with
a model that delivers information on the users' experiences to service
providers and device manufacturers. This model is based on the agreements these
companies make with their customers. This can run the gamut from anonymous
statistics aggregated from millions of devices that analyze dropped calls to
specific configuration of a user's device used to assist a care agent during a
customer support call.
Up
until now, most mobile analytics were captured by vans with monitoring
equipment that roamed areas to measure local carrier
signal strength or to analyze the operators' billing information. Now, the
folks at Carrier IQ are working with numerous wireless operators and
mobile device makers and have embedded a small piece of monitoring software
that periodically reports device performance data using a secure encrypted
channel to Carrier IQ's customers. This software is like an "
E.T. phone home" process. Plus, this quality assurance data collection process is designed not
to adversely affect the battery life.
Depending
on the use case, Carrier IQ can collect information that
reports on dropped calls (where and when, along with signal information at the
time), battery life and reliability issues with the device, network performance
and throughput, application usage, Web analytics, and quality of connection
over time. Carrier IQ works with mobile operators,
mobile device manufacturers and research companies to provide the best, true
intelligence on what's really going on inside the mobile device.
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