Geographical dispersal of mobile communication networks

Understand

In this paper, we analyze statistical properties of a communication network constructed from the records of a mobile phone company.

• The network consists of 2.5 million customers that have placed 810 millions of communications (phone calls and text messages) over a period of 6 months and for whom we have geographical home localization information.
• It is shown that the degree distribution in this network has a power-law degree distribution $k^{-5}$ and that the probability that two customers are connected by a link follows a gravity model, i.e.
• decreases like $d^{-2}$, where $d$ is the distance between the customers.