Chris Volinsky, Assistant Vice President at AT&T Labs-Research, details how AT&T collected ground-truth data to map cell tower handoff sequences to specific driving routes.
“We went out and we drove each of these 12 routes 10 times each with two phones in the car, making calls, and GPS running on each one, and to get our training set to understand if you're on this route, what does the cell tower handoff sequence look like?”
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More from Chris Volinsky
Insight
Volinsky: Cell phone data reflects identity, browsing habits, and physical location
“Your cell phone Is a real reflection of who you are, where you surf, where you are.”
Chris VolinskyMar 20, 2014▶ 3:00Chris Volinsky, AT&T // Data Driven #25 // March 2014 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Volinsky: AT&T does not monitor or retain call or text content
“We never have any idea of what you're talking about or who you're texting, or what you're texting, the content of your text. All we have is a transactional record that this phone was at this location and made this particular transaction, but we don't know any …”
Chris VolinskyMar 20, 2014▶ 6:38Chris Volinsky, AT&T // Data Driven #25 // March 2014 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Volinsky: AT&T always processes mobile network data anonymously
“We always look at the data in anonymous form. We aggregate whenever possible when the application allows it.”
Chris VolinskyMar 20, 2014▶ 7:00Chris Volinsky, AT&T // Data Driven #25 // March 2014 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Insight
Volinsky: Effective data visualization often requires large physical paper printouts
“Sometimes to do really good data visualization, You need to kill some trees, unfortunately. There's not, there's very little substitute for, like, actually printing something out huge and putting it on the wall.”
Chris VolinskyMar 20, 2014▶ 10:31Chris Volinsky, AT&T // Data Driven #25 // March 2014 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
AssertionContradicted
Volinsky: AT&T does not sell its customer mobility data
“We actually don't sell it yet at all.”
Chris VolinskyMar 20, 2014▶ 20:25Chris Volinsky, AT&T // Data Driven #25 // March 2014 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Disclosure
Volinsky: AT&T plans to sell mobility analytics services to municipalities
“Now there's another part, you know, for the services that we might provide to a town or a municipality, that we would sell as a service.”
Chris VolinskyMar 20, 2014▶ 21:07Chris Volinsky, AT&T // Data Driven #25 // March 2014 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
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