Interplay between Telecommunications and Face-to-Face Interactions: A Study Using Mobile Phone Data
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Calabrese-2011-Interplay between Te.pdf
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Author(s)
Calabrese, Francesco
Smoreda, Zbigniew
Blondel, Vincent D.
Ratti, Carlo
Date Issued
July 2011
Journal
PLoS ONE
Publisher
Public Library of Science
Citation
Calabrese, Francesco et al. “Interplay between Telecommunications and Face-to-Face Interactions: A Study Using Mobile Phone Data.” Ed. Enrico Scalas. PLoS ONE 6 (2011): e20814.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
In this study we analyze one year of anonymized telecommunications data for over one million customers from a large European cellphone operator, and we investigate the relationship between people's calls and their physical location. We discover that more than 90% of users who have called each other have also shared the same space (cell tower), even if they live far apart. Moreover, we find that close to 70% of users who call each other frequently (at least once per month on average) have shared the same space at the same time - an instance that we call co-location. Co-locations appear indicative of coordination calls, which occur just before face-to-face meetings. Their number is highly predictable based on the amount of calls between two users and the distance between their home locations - suggesting a new way to quantify the interplay between telecommunications and face-to-face interactions.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. SENSEable City Laboratory
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Creative Commons Attribution
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0020814
