Mobility Insights: create value from mobile movement data

The network events for a calendar day are extracted from the mobile communication systems automatically the following night. At the same time, the IMSI number is replaced by a hash automatically and with no human involvement. The resulting data thus consists of the time, a hash identifier and the radio cell. The position of the SIM cards is then determined by a positioning algorithm which uses probabilistic triangulation to convert the hashed network events into geographical areas. Finally, the geographical areas are transferred by aggregation into quadrants of 100 x 100 metres. The entire territory of Switzerland is divided into such quadrants. After aggregation, the quadrants show the number of SIM cards that have remained or moved within them over the course of a particular hour. If the number of SIM cards detected by Swisscom in a quadrant is less than 20 (k-anonymity), the MIP does not provide any evaluations of this quadrant. The team processing the hashed network events has no access to data about the SIM card holders.

No, this is not technically possible. The evaluations provided on the Mobility Insights Portal are merely an approximation of reality. Swisscom can only determine the position of a SIM card approximately for technical reasons. The median position of a SIM card determined by Swisscom differs from the actual position by around 130 metres. The median represents the radius. In reality, the SIM card in question will have been located somewhere within a radius of 260 metres around the position determined by Swisscom. This radius has an area of around 53,000 m2. As a result of these discrepancies, the position determined by Swisscom may appear in a different quadrant than the one in which the SIM card was actually located. Identification of a SIM card holder is technically not possible under these circumstances, especially given the fact that the reports represent historical information and a k-anonymity of 20 is guaranteed by default.