Various areas of the federal government increasingly depend on geolocation data, proving essential...
What exactly is commercial telemetry data?
Commercial telemetry data refers to the automatic recording and transmission of measurements, logs, metrics, events, and sensor readings broadcast by connected devices and cloud services.
Government agencies have already popularized the term commercial telemetry data to describe location and other signals purchased from private brokers. For teams in the open source intelligence (OSINT) community, commercial telemetry data’s value lies in its coverage, cadence, and legal accessibility. Below are the primary streams you’re likely to encounter and the problems they solve.
Types and Examples of Commercial Telemetry Data
1: Connected Vehicle Telemetry (Vehicle Telematics)
A modern passenger car, truck, or bus has an embedded telematics control unit that streams packets over cellular or satellite links every few seconds or minutes. Those packets include sensor readings from the controller area network (CAN) bus, GNSS fixes, and usage events, all routed to automaker or third-party clouds. Depending on the source, the data can be near real-time, providing organizations and agencies with insight into traffic patterns and events.
2: Cellular Network Telemetry
Every cell tower records transactional metadata, including call-detail records (CDRs) and signal-quality measurements. But a key output is triangulating the location of a given device. By measuring how quickly a signal bounces from a cellular device to various towers and how strong the signal is to each of those towers, organizations can determine the device’s location. This is essential for E911 services (emergency response text or alerts) and for 911 dispatchers to accurately locate callers in emergency situations or when the call is disconnected. Carriers constantly collect this data to ensure phones have the strongest possible signal, but the data is messy and difficult to work with, both for the carrier and for third parties.
3: Telemetry Data From Mobile Applications (Location Data)
Mobile apps instrumented with SDKs capture a variety of contextual metadata, including anonymized login information, device data and ID, latitude/longitude, etc. Users agree to share this data, which is then made commercially available on the marketplace. Unlike cellular telemetry, the data is not collected and processed in real-time, though it’s more readily available for implementation. That said, the raw data collected from SDKs and sold by data brokers often has a high number of synthetic signals and other anomalies that can make it difficult to work with the data.
Use Cases for Telemetry Data
Open Source Intelligence (OSINT)
Analysts fuse commercial telemetry data with publicly available text, imagery, and RF intercepts to validate narratives at machine speed. Footfall anomalies around sensitive facilities, unexpected road traffic densities, or device clustering near border crossings can corroborate or falsify social media claims long before traditional HUMINT is available.
Force Protection & Travel-Risk Management
Security teams monitor population patterns around offices, project sites, or travel routes. Sudden spikes in crowd density, cellular-tower outages, or devices lingering in no-go zones can automatically trigger alerting workflows: rerouting motorcades, locking lobby doors, or escalating to local responders. When paired with historical baselines, telemetry data helps distinguish routine gatherings (e.g., sports events) from emerging threats.
Supply Chain Visibility & Resilience
Manufacturers and logistics providers overlay cellular and app-based telemetry data on multimodal routes to spot dwell-time outliers, congestion pinch points, or cold-chain excursions. The same datasets power strategic planning: validating supplier-facility utilization, estimating competitor throughput, or mapping alternate lanes of commerce when geopolitical shocks disrupt primary corridors.
Where does Venntel Fit in the Telemetry Data Ecosystem?
Venntel focuses on the telemetry data drawn from mobile applications, i.e., location data. We collect commercially available data from brokers and other vendors, processing some 60 billion signals daily, and bring each signal into a single, reliable data set.
Curated Data
Venntel enhances each of the 60 billion signals it processes with robust analytics, offering informational and contextual analytics so OSINT teams start with precise, curated data products rather than untouched, noisy raw data.
Privacy by Design
All data is device-pseudonymous and sourced under opt-in agreements, aligning with DHS and FTC guidance on CTD procurement.
Analytic-ready Delivery
Whether you need flat files for data science notebooks, streaming APIs for alerting, or geofencing portals for rapid triage, Venntel tailors output formats to your workflow.
Moving Forward
Commercial telemetry data is no longer a niche adjunct to government agencies and their partners; it is now an essential dataset for the OSINT stack and a pivotal edge for enterprises tasked with protecting people, assets, and revenue.
All of the examples of commercial telemetry data are necessary for different use cases. Venntel, however, has purpose built telemetry data solutions specifically for OSINT platforms, teams focused on force protection or travel risk, supply chain visibility, and more.
Interested in learning more on how curated telemetry data can fit within your organization's goals? Contact Venntel's data solutions team to schedule a demo and try a sample dataset today.
