  Smartphone apps provide a vitally important opportunity for monitoring human
mobility, human experience of ubiquitous information aids, and human activity
in our increasingly well-instrumented spaces. As wireless data capabilities
move steadily up in performance, from 2&3G to 4G (today's LTE) and 5G, it has
become more important to measure human activity in this connected world from
the phones themselves. The newer protocols serve larger areas than ever before
and a wider range of data, not just voice calls, so only the phone can
accurately measure its location. Access to the application activity permits not
only monitoring the performance and spatial coverage with which the users are
served, but as a crowd-sourced, unbiased background source of input on all
these subjects, becomes a uniquely valuable resource for input to social
science and government as well as telecom providers
