A Study of Data Quality Issues in Mobile Telecom Operators

Telecommunication operators currently servicing mobile users world-wide have dramatically increased in the last few years. Although most of the operators use similar technologies and equipment provided by world leaders in the field such as Ericsson, Nokia-Siemens, Motorola, etc, it can be observed that many vendors utilize propriety methods and processes for maintaining network status and collecting statistical data for detailed monitoring of network elements. This data forms their competitive differentiation and hence is extremely valuable for the organization. However, in this paper we will demonstrate through a case study based on a GSM operator in Iran, how this mission critical data can be fraught with serious data quality problems, leading to diminished capacity to take appropriate action and ultimately achieve customer satisfaction. We will further present a taxonomy of data quality problems derived from the case study. A breif survey of reported literature on data quality is presented in the context of the taxonomy, which can not only be utilized as a framework to classify and understand data quality problems in the telecommunication domain but can also be used for other domains with similar information systems landscapes.