We would like to underline a major difference between this work and that by de Montjoye et al., as in theirs the training set also includes the points used for the testing and the mobility traces are extracted from mobile operators' call data records, instead of exact GPS points.
Here we leverage mobile call log data from Côte d'Ivoire to analyze the relations between its nation-wide communications network and the socio-economic dynamics of its regional economies.
AMES describes Cerebro as a "core technology designed to monitor and analyse in real time communications … including SMS (texting), GSM (mobile calls), billing data, emails, conversations, webmail, chat sessions and social networks".
Operators offer data communications far more cheaply than voice, often in the form of flat-rate data packages, so subscribers could avoid call charges and roaming charges by using a VoIP program to disguise their mobile calls as data traffic.
If we want to see preparedness in using mobile networks and call data then mechanisms and partnerships need to be in place with telecommunication companies before the outbreaks hit.
Yet, these models typically consider only a single kind of data source, such as data from mobile calls or location data obtained from GPS and web applications.
Here we study how humans behave in similar situations, using data from mobile call detail records from a European country.
The application of sophisticated analytics to new sources of data, including mobile call histories and social networks, promises better results at far lower costs than traditional models.
A T-Mobile spokesman said that because the carriers had different ways of tallying requests for call data, T-Mobile was "initially concerned the comparison could lead to an inaccurate portrayal").
