IoT in Action ep. 2: Vodafone NZ uses big data to learn about its customers

In our second episode of IoT in Action, we speak with David Bloch of Vodafone New Zealand at Teradata PARTNERS 2016 in Atlanta, Georgia. Bloch said the network operator uses Teradata’s Aster and Hadoop clusters to capture real-time big data, around 45 billion events a month, from Vodafone’s cellular network. This helps the company learn more about its customers.
One of the challenges Vodafone NZ has is that a large portion of its customers use prepaid phones, and therefore do not need to register any personal details. To identify these customers, Vodafone uses behavioral data statistics to match the way people use data to their demographics. Vodafone uses deep packet analysis to determine from which source a particular packet comes from. So if they see a customer who uses a lot of data and spends a lot of time on social media, they can start to link that customer as a youth. Once that data is collected, Vodafone can start to offer more customized, optimized pricing models and features.
Vodafone is also capturing location data so they know the difference between someone visiting New Zealand and those travelling out. This allows them to offer packages suited to its customer’s travel plans.
Vodafone New Zealand is also responding to natural disasters that have happened in the country over the past few years by using past data to determine what it can do to better facilitate such an event if it were to happen again.