* Carriers share location data in Italy, Germany and Austria
* Anonymous, aggregated data help monitor lockdown
compliance
* No use of individual tracking, which would be illegal in
Europe
By Elvira Pollina and Douglas Busvine
MILAN/BERLIN, March 18 (Reuters) - Mobile carriers are
sharing data with the health authorities in Italy, Germany and
Austria, helping to fight coronavirus by monitoring whether
people are complying with curbs on movement while at the same
time respecting Europe's privacy laws.
The data, which are anonymous and aggregated, make it
possible to map concentrations and movements of customers in
'hot zones' where COVID-19 has taken hold.
That is less invasive than the approach taken by countries
like China, Taiwan and South Korea, which use smartphone
location readings to trace the contacts of individuals who have
tested positive or to enforce quarantine orders.
The Asian approach has shown impressive results. In Europe,
however, the emphasis is on monitoring compliance with lockdowns
to slow the pandemic.
In Germany, where schools and restaurants are closing and
people have been told to work at home if they can, the data
donated by Deutsche Telekom offer insights into
whether people are complying, health czar Lothar Wieler said.
"If people remain as mobile as they were until a week ago,
it will be difficult to contain the virus," Wieler, president of
the Robert Koch Institute, said on Wednesday.
Germany was entering the epidemic's exponential phase,
Wieler added, warning that without progress in reducing
person-to-person contacts, as many as 10 million people could be
infected in two or three months.
Germany's coronavirus cases jumped by more than 1,000
overnight to 8,198. There have been 12 fatalities.
ITALY, AUSTRIA
In Italy, mobile carriers Telecom Italia, Vodafone
and WindTre have offered authorities aggregated data to
monitor people's movements.
The Lombardy region is using the data to see how many people
are observing a strict lockdown. Movements exceeding 300-500
metres (yards) are down by around 60% since Feb. 21, when the
first case was discovered in the Codogno area, the data show.
"Wherever technically possible, and legally permissible,
Vodafone will be willing to assist governments in developing
insights based on large, anonymised datasets," CEO Nick Read
said.
Austria imposed a national lockdown after coronavirus spread
among ski tourists in Tyrol who, as they headed home, have
spread the infection across central and northern Europe.
Telekom Austria, operating under the A1 brand, is
sharing results from a motion analysis application developed by
Invenium, a spin-off from the Graz University of Technology.
The tool is compliant with EU privacy rulebook the General
Data Protection Regulation, which restricts the processing of
sensitive personal data without its owner's explicit consent.
"With these data it is possible to visualize the movement
flows of groups of people," A1 spokesperson Livia Dandrea-Boehm
said.
(Writing by Douglas Busvine; Additional reporting by Nadine
Schimroszik and Paul Sandle)