How Your Mobile Carrier Decides Whether to Pamper You

The controversy over "data throttling" has drawn attention to the way mobile carriers manage their networks: they target heavy users—the ones with unlimited data plans—by slowing down data-transfer speeds after they hit a certain threshold. But carriers worldwide are also using sophisticated data analysis to give other customers—the ones with high-priced plans—gold-plated customer service to keep them happy, industry players say. Carriers increasingly have access to huge quantities of data about their users, and they are mining this information for all sorts of insights. This is part of a broader trend across many industries.