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The contribution of telco data to fight the COVID-19 pandemic: Experience of Telefonica throughout its footprint

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic is a global challenge for humanity, in which a large number of resources are invested to develop effective vaccines and treatments. At the same time, governments try to manage the spread of the disease while alleviating the strong impact derived from the slowdown in economic activity. Governments were forced to impose strict lockdown measures to tackle the pandemic. This significantly changed people’s mobility and habits, subsequently impacting the economy. In this context, the availability of tools to effectively monitor and quantify mobility was key for public institutions to decide which policies to implement and for how long. Telefonica has promoted different initiatives to offer governments mobility insights throughout many of the countries where it operates in Europe and Latin America. Mobility indicators with high spatial granularity and frequency of updates were successfully deployed in different formats. However, Telefonica faced many challenges (not only technical) to put these tools into service in a short timing: from reducing latency in insights to ensuring the security and privacy of information. In this article, we provide details on how Telefonica engaged with governments and other stakeholders in different countries as a response to the pandemic. We also cover the challenges faced and the shared learnings from Telefonica’s experience in those countries. Policy Significance Statement Humanity is facing one of its greatest challenges in decades that requires governments to take complex decisions. The digitization of our society and the telecommunications sector has pushed the development of Big Data and artificial intelligence, offering unique opportunities to develop tools based on data. Much of these data are generated from the private sector and can be safely offered to governments for better-informed decisions and policymaking. For the case of mobility indicators, the evidence of this value has been demonstrated. However, there are still barriers in both sectors to scale these tools effectively and widely. We believe that the commitment to the complete digital transformation of the public sector, the creation of regulatory frameworks in accordance with the use of data for the public interest, and the incentives for companies to invest in these technologies and capacity building are key to their future development.