An indication of where Airtel wants to go with its business now, is possibly something it has announced this morning: a "strategic partnership" with SK Telecom, one of South Korea's largest chaebols. The focus of the partnership, as per the announcement is on improving its network based on individual devices. Airtel says that it will use machine learning, big data to build customised tools to improve network planning based on every customers device experience. The tools will help it identify, monitor and deliver improvements on an individual device basis. This sounds implausible, to be honest, to customise network experience differently for, say, five different people in a room, with different devices but no harm in stating that as an intent. Airtel plans to develop its own software for this. A problem that telecom operators crib about is the number of types of devices in India (often cheap Chinese handsets) which make it difficult for them to optimise the network for users. If the device doesn't play well with the network, the network gets the blame. Thus there is a legitimate interest in Airtel wanting to improve the network for individual devices. But what about privacy? The image in this post (one I took at the Mobile World Congress a few years ago), has never been more relevant to a post than this: Networks that know [that] no two customers are alike. One will have to be conscious of device specific data collection, given that there is currently a discussion on privacy…
