Abstract

Mobile network operator (MNO) data has huge potential for official statistics. Commercially available data is currently created and processed in a kind of black box, as the aggregation and extrapolation of the data is a business secret. MNOs currently can’t share their processing steps, as they employ confidential information like cell tower positions and local market shares for their algorithms. For the usage of MNO data in official statistics, this black box has to be opened if the quality criteria of transparency and comparability are to be achieved.

To solve this problem, DESTATIS has partnered with T-Systems (a subsidiary of the MNO “Deutsche Telekom”). In this collaboration, T-Systems provides DESTATIS, for the first time at all, with access to the secure environments of an MNO to work with anonymized raw signal data. The goal of the collaboration is to create a standardized, transparent and privacy-conform method for an access to MNO data. This work is a part of a large German research cluster on the anonymization of georeferenced data (AnigeD).

In this presentation, DESTATIS will give an update on the current status of the project. Afterwards, we will explain in detail the planned next steps and the underlying theoretical considerations.