BT Active Intelligence: Solving customer problems through mobility insights

Steve Wiley, Managing Director of BT Group’s Active Intelligence unit, has a deep background in data and technology sectors. 

Speaking to TelcoTitans, he jokes that he was “in digital before it was digital”, having spent more than 25 years “bridging the divide between product creation, ideation, innovation and technology”.

Upon taking leadership of the BT unit, Wiley applied his blend of corporate and entrepreneurial experience to transform BT’s data and technology assets into a compelling commercial offering designed to unlock the daily value of mobile network data to extract insights — driving growth and meeting evolving customer needs.

“We did what any good startup would do”, explains Wiley, “we worked out who the customer was, the problems we could solve with our data, then identified the markets we wanted to be in and had a right to play in”.

Wiley sees the geospatial data market as an important area for the business and believes Active Intelligence is uniquely positioned to turn mobility insights into both commercial opportunity and societal value.

Active Intelligence: taking anonymised handset data and running with it

Active Intelligence draws on anonymised and aggregated network data from 24 million EE handsets, which flows into a data hub where different data science engines are applied.

By processing and blending weblog and location data from around 25 billion data points a day, Active Intelligence uncovers patterns and historical movement trends. This sees timestamped datasets feeding into AI-driven analytics that extract insights into journeys, population flows, and footfall — translating raw data into actionable intelligence.

Working at mobile network levels of granularity, covering 150m x 150m areas, Active Intelligence offers unprecedented accuracy in geospatial data. Wiley describes this precision as a distinctive advantage for transforming decision making across industries.

“We don’t leave it at the handset data: we scale it to represent the UK population. That’s where the real power lies: transforming granular network data into representative insights and trends on how the UK population moves and behaves.” 

Wiley.

From a BT startup to a BT scale‑up

Wiley brings a startup mentality to Active Intelligence, but is equally excited about the potential that comes with being part of a major business.

“The experience of the past three years has enabled us to get a clear idea of the use cases and industry sectors that we can support. The hard early miles have led the team to a point today, where we can now focus on scaling”, Wiley says.

This is seeing Active Intelligence working with channel partners and opening reselling opportunities to expand its reach, with its own direct sales team supporting specific customer needs.

The next step is what Wiley describes as “a classic scaling conversation” — making more people aware of what the business can do.

An example of Active Intelligence partnering to scale can be seen through its relationship with Snowflake. Wiley says that working with the cloud data platform player has opened up “the art of the possible” for data solutions as the Active Intelligence portfolio has been integrated with the Snowflake Marketplace, providing additional productised reach.

Turbocharging power-users, unleashing geospatial data for newbies

Active Intelligence broadly sees two types of customer: mature, heavy data use organisations, already advanced in employing data to optimise their operations; and others seeking a more targeted solution based on a specific problem they are trying to solve.

Rail operators and other transit industry stakeholders fit firmly in the first category, while an example of the second may be a local authority looking for help understanding the potential or actual impact of planning decisions that could see road layout changes or major retail outlets introduced into an area.

Wiley cites Network Rail as a customer for Active Intelligence, having worked extensively with the infrastructure operator on optimising the UK rail network. Other industry verticals where Active Intelligence could play a valuable role include the emergency services, media, real estate, retail, and tourism.

As a leader, Wiley is also driven by the societal impact of Active Intelligence’s data solutions. Reflecting on his own commute from the northwest to London, he credits insights delivered to Network Rail with helping streamline his journey — an everyday example of how data can power tangible improvements.

“We’re proud of how BT, through Active Intelligence, can provide a service that can create such value for the country at critical times.”  

Wiley.

This enthusiasm for leveraging mobile data for new customer services is set to continue, with the unit exploring other data opportunities. While details on prospective partnerships cannot be shared yet, Wiley confides that “as the value of data is being more and more understood by organisations, new opportunities are appearing that enhance our proposition”.