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Most consultancies simply provide data about what's goin wrong in a network.Tele.phia is arming wireless carriers with competitive market data that can make networks work better. By Tim McElligott
Like most Californians, Mick Mullagh arrived circuitously. Not that would be wise these days, but Mullagh says he can carry three passports. His life's journey began in England, and he got his advanced education in Ireland and Canada. He went to San Francisco-the place Chicago Tribune columnist Mike Royko once calleded the land of flakes and oddballs-to restore a little reality, coast-to-coast.
Mullagh's reality restoration effort starts with wireless carriers and their customers. "The )er one reason customers move from Carrier X to Carrier Y perception, not the reality that Carrier Y has a better network." saidsaid Mullagh. "That's why we think this business has relevance in the industry."
The business is Telephia, a 4-year-old wireless market analysis firm where Mullagh is CEO. Telephia has evolved from a consultancy focused on bringing competitive intelligence to the wireless industry to one bent on improving the performance of the industry itself, expanding into a comprehensive intelligence service that combines network performance testing of both voice and data networks with market intelligence. That market intelligence data ranges from market share and churn to pricing plans and media spin.The goal is to correlate data from individual operators with overall industry metrics to provide what Telephia calls "syndicated industry intelligence."
"Other companies do drive testing We are the only company that helps carriers understand why they are performing in the marketplace in either a superior or less-than-superior fashion," said Mullagh. "That helps them figure out where they should be spending their dollars."
That's no small task, especially in an industry that closely guards its performance quality secrets. But investors such as AEA Investors and Centennial Ventures, which provided the bulk of Telephia's $38 million round of Series D funding last November, are betting the company can do it.
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