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Nielsen Buys Telephia

I thought that Telephia was in the business of selling mobile data back to the carriers to help them improve coverage? Obviously this business model wasn't sustainable due to the consolidation of carriers from 8 to 4. Sometimes I question the future lifespan of a company like Nielsen in our "on-demand" world of Tivo's and real data downloads? Extrapolating viewer numbers based on sample data and surveys like Comscore, Alexa, Compete and Nielsen TV Set Top boxes is a scam. Actually, numbers from relevant consumers is the new model in my opinion.

Drive testing and surveying a few thousand mobile users by making direct phone calls to customers seems like another customer survey methodology that is expensive and lacks relevancy. Why don't survey companies source more qualified panelists through web sites like DeadCellZones.com where customers are actually qualified to give feedback. Most survey companies motivate panelists by giving them a reward for taking a survey. If you were a carrier concerned with buying quality customer service data would you rather purchase information from a customer that was angry or one that just wanted a reward.

Micro-targeting customers is possible with the internet and big companies still have a hard time thinking on a smaller scale. Is that a qualified or relevant customer that is worth? The fact that companies like JD Power and Telephia are the current "industry standard" for customer satisfaction is pretty scary. There are hundreds of millions of mobile customers and the fact that these companies only survey may be less than 100,000 users per year is ridiculous. My advice is to survey customers who actually have problems to help prioritize network improvements.