Normally when there’s talk of an operator joining forces with the government the context is usually negative such as tracking suspected terrorists without a warrant or highlighting the past location of someone who is on trial for some heinous crime, but what if the government and mobile operators actually did something useful together? NTT DoCoMo, the largest operator in the land of the rising sun, and the University of Tokyo are getting together to conduct research on urban planning. DoCoMo already knows where you are all the time, and the routes you take to work, to your favorites restaurants, and even who you hang out with the most. That information is going to be anonymized and handed over to the University of Tokyo where they’ll try to see if they can make the city work better.
The joint research project will last between November 1, 2010 to March 31, 2011 and will utilize data from the population of Kashiwa City, a suburb of Tokyo. The goal is to better organize public services, notify tourists of potentially interesting local events, and even setup a bicycle sharing system similar to ones seen in Europe. Would you let your operator give data about you to the government so that they can better plan the public infrastructure? I know I would in a heart beat since I depend on the subway, trams and busses here in Helsinki for all my daily needs. Making a better city, and by better I mean helping to facilitate people moving about for purposes of commerce, cultural events, or just plain old exploration, is something many places around the world are trying to do, and this research may serve as a template of the type of data that can be collected with such a vast set of data.
The sad thing is that Google and Apple and Microsoft and Nokia and just about anyone else selling smartphones already know where you are most of the time. Instead of using that data to help make your life easier however, they just serve you better ads. Yuck.