Carrier IQ lets carriers open their network quality stats to subscribers

Vilified just weeks ago for its behavior in collecting network performance metrics directly from subscribers' phones, Carrier IQ is taking the opposite approach at Mobile World Congress this week.

The company's IQ Care product — designed to help service reps get a sense of what's wrong with customers' devices when they call in — is being retrofitted with a customer-facing "dashboard" that will allow them to see "health and performance of their device, applications, battery life, network coverage and dropped calls." This won't automatically become available to everyone whose carrier uses Carrier IQ, of course — it'll be up for each carrier to integrate the new option at their discretion. Carrier IQ gives the example of exposing the information through the carrier's online account portal, which could help you figure out why you're battery's draining so quickly or whether you're experiencing more dropped calls than "normal" and may need to exchange your device.