When I speak with telecom industry insiders about the value that Carrier IQ providers to their customers (who?) it isn't clear. The only things I have heard from people who know the company is that they have "issues" and their data is "too expensive". I have tried to reach out to the company several times unsuccessfully to see about building a mutually beneficial relationship. One of my biggest "pet peeves" being a telecom industry outsider is the incestuous nature of protected carrier business relationships. As I see it the carriers are unwilling to look at open data source solutions to solving the problem and would rather spend 1000X more on a solution that might not return any more value than we do. In my view, the RF engineers are trying to protect their jobs at all costs and continue to create complicated stories that the marketing / business people can't comprehend.
From what I hear about their fancy mobile handset intelligence solution is that it provides quantifiable data that their customers can act on but are they really solving the problem better than we are? What is wrong with having actual customers log complaints where the network stinks for free. Carrier IQ probably thousands of handsets on the market that are generating data on their behalf that the consumer doesn't even know about. Its impossible to fill in all of the billions of places that have coverage gaps so shouldn't a smart carrier purchase data where their customers WANT it most. As you can see I am a reluctant supporter of applications that sit on the handset and eat up bandwidth, battery life and network bandwidth.
Bridgescale Partners recently led a a $12M series D round of financing for CarrierIQ a provider of mobile service intelligence solutions that use the mobile phone to give detailed metrics on service quality and usage. Mohr Davidow Ventures, Accel Partners, Charles River Ventures, Nauta Capital, and Intel Capital also participated in the round. If anyone can share customers or revenue history please post on the comments section below. However, here is a summary of their funding history which seems very elaborate considering the simple problem they are solving.
Total Funding - $42M
Series A, 8/06 $10M
Mohr Davidow Ventures
Accel Partners
Benchmark Capital
Series C, 1/09 $20M
Intel Capital
Presidio Ventures
Sumitomo Corporation
Series D, 6/10 $12M
Bridgescale Partners
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Sounds like some sour grapes John...I would imagine WHERE deadzones are is just one tiny fraction of the problem.
That is like saying there is Excel by Microsoft, why does any corporation need Business Intelligence software. :-)
Anon
Sounds like there is a reason your a telecom outsider. You dont understand what quality data like EcIo and TxPower, RxPower etc can do for a team. Also they have the ability to tell if the issues are with the phone and not the network. Imagine the cost that carriers have to incur from NTF handset. Customers are not technically savvy enough to understand what happened to their call, they can hardly remember exactly where the poor service was. DeadZones is definitely for the user (especially the guy who thinks hes a network engineer) ..not for the provider.
Seems like there is a clear lack of understanding on value this brings to a telco insider to be able to have quality data on device, network, applications, user experience, quality perceived....& directly from the users perspective.
I love it & many more as its growing every day....so there is clearly a value to telco insiders.
I am running a handset that has had all carrier IQ removed. I get over 24 hours of battery life now. Previously, running stock, I would get possibly 5 hours. I have better data speeds and better call reception. I don't want all my keystrokes and personal data to be the hands of corporations, who do not have my best interests at heart. I did not give consent for this and see the use of such software unethical. I can see no positive effect this can have for the end user. I can see many scenarios in which these corporations could heinously profit from it, though.
I'm sure there aren't privacy issues associated with such an application, right? The consumers know this is on their phones? It doesn't affect battery life? It won't open operators to lawsuits? Will be interesting to see how this unfolds.