Thought Leaders in Big Data: Interview with Matti Aksela, VP of Analytics at Comptel (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Are real customers using this product?

Matti Aksela: Yes, there are customers using this. One of them is from Bangladesh, and they announced they are going into production right now, for example.

SM: Are any European or U.S. carriers using this?

MA: There are some in Europe. In the U.S. I would say that our market really isn’t that big for analytics solutions. Therefore, our presence in the U.S. market isn’t that strong. When you come from the European side, I believe it is a bit harder if you don’t focus on the American market. Our markets are the Pacific Region, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

SM: My big skepticism in what I heard so far is the fact that you are not able to provide customer or revenue data. Of course, my skepticism means nothing – if your customers accept your solution and you can deliver, I think that validates the point. But it is not clear to me that it is legal for software to go into people’s social network and use that to do what you are saying you are doing.

MA: There are reference customers who acquired our solution. As for using the data, it is really about what you are using the data for. Especially in Europe it is about how you are using the information. We always respect privacy rules. If you are looking at it from the perspective of prepaid markets in the Pacific region, the legislation and culture about this are different. You are able to opt in to services, allowing customers to send you messages in exchange for cheaper call rates, for example. This is a way to encourage participation in these kinds of programs.

SM: We have a very sophisticated audience. Can you be granular about what data tells you what, in a specific reference customer use case, which you are legally allowed to do?

MA: When we are talking about Comptel social links at the key data sources we want to do, of course the CRM data or the subscriber information is available.

SM: Subscriber data for a carrier is proprietary data – that I don’t have a problem with. But that doesn’t give you the information you are saying you are using to predict behavior.

MA: That is a part of the information. The other source of information are detail records, in terms of which subscribers have called whom. We don’t dig into the actual content of the message – we don’t read SMS data, we don’t listen in to the calls, etc. That is definitely a level of privacy that we respect.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Thought Leaders in Big Data: Interview with Matti Aksela, VP of Analytics at Comptel
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