Wireless data new source of cash

Info sold for marketing

Studying the commuting habits of California residents, transportation consultant Fehr & Peers used cellular signals to track travel patterns for 76,500 handset users.

The firm was testing a new service from Atlantabased startup AirSage that tracked wireless signals from consumer phones in near-real time.

As demand from transportation planners, retail- ers and marketers grows, scores of companies, including AirSage, ComScore and SAP, are taking mobile-user data from carriers like Verizon Wireless, analyzing it and packaging it into reports they can sell. AirSage’s revenues are rising by 25 percent a quarter, according to the company.

While privacy advocates question the practice and the government is considering tighter regulations, carriers view it as welcome extra revenue as voice calls continue to decline and contract subscriber growth slows.

Phone companies already collect data on user location, as well as web surfing and application use, to adjust their networks to handle traffic better. Two carriers, Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel, are just starting to make the data available to third-party companies in hopes of booking millions in sales. Worldwide, revenue from selling mobileuser behavior data may reach $9.6 billion in 2016, up from $5.5 billion last year, Walldorf, Germanybased SAP estimated.

“The value of mobile subscribers is flattening out, and wireless operators are all interested in new ways to generate revenue,” Cy Smith, chief executive officer of AirSage, said in an interview. “The value of this data is still in the early stages of being recognized.”

Carriers get a portion of revenue that companies like AirSage and SAP will make from selling their reports.

The phone data can indicate what kinds of websites are most popular within a particular location on a specific day, allowing marketers to better tailor ads to viewers. The information can show how a population moves through a shopping mall within the work week. The sample size can be much larger than anything that app providers, operatingsystem makers like Google and Apple, or mobile-ad networks like Millennial Media can gather.