Problems and Opportunities of Working with a Telco's Large Data Sets of Mobile Data

Leo Ferres, Universidad del Desarrollo, Santiago

Abstract: Since 2016, through an association between Telefónica R&D and the Institute of Data Science in Chile, a group of researchers and myself have been working with trillions of digital traces left behind when people use their mobile phones. All of this work has been done under the general umbrella term of "data science for social good", and we have worked on anything from population displacement after external events like earthquakes, how people started using public spaces after the introduction of a popular mobile game, to actual social inclusion of people of different socio-economic backgrounds mixing in shopping malls or reading certain kinds of news, or patterns arising from gendered data sets. We will show how data in the private sector made us learn important social lessons such as how parks can become more secure when people went out to play Pokemon Go, how certain malls are hubs of social inclusion, how gender segregates the city and how different demographics keep themselves in their own informational filter bubble. However, even after all this benefits, the relationship with industry has never been fluid, and involves a lot of small and not so small compromises and "battles". In this talk, I will present a technical history of the work we've done with X/CDRs for social good including practical aspects of accessing and sharing data, the balance of research and industrial innovation, and issues of transactions costs while still providing value for the company itself, government, the university and society. I will also recount experiences about what it meant for a company like Telefónica and a research university like us to travel together in a very interesting context of huge data, incredible insights, privacy considerations, money, corporate interests, university expectations, and data-driven discovery.