Cell data tracking company continues lobby push, despite tough reception

A company that says its privacy-focused software app can tell employers exactly how their employees are using their phones at work said it hasn’t received support for its product in the country it was born in. Toronto-based Mobilityview says its phone app can automatically generate a log of every business call, text and piece of data made by an employee through its patented system it claims is the only one of its kind in the world. Its purpose is to help employers see exactly what activity can be claimed as a tax credit and what’s actually a taxable benefit, the company says. “We offer a solution to the Canadian taxpayer that will ensure that governmental employees are accountable for their personal usage and ideally repaying the government for their personal usage,” Thom Damstra, the company’s CEO, said in a phone interview. “Our solution will generate $1.6 billion a year in new taxable revenue,” he claims. But to get there, it has to reach government phones first. Behind the scenes, the company says it has been lobbying all levels of government to adopt the software. Last week, it renewed its registration with the Ontario government and in May 2018, it approached the City of Toronto about it during a period where the city was looking to replace its telecom expense management system. Damstra says Mobilityview has had a less-than-receptive response from government officials because, he said, they want to see the company generate more revenue. Damstra did not specify where that response came from. “We have received virtually no support,” Damstra said. Andrea Martinelli, acting senior communications coordinator for the City of Toronto, said it could not accept Mobilityview’s “unsolicited quotation or proposal...if it resembles a current or upcoming competitive procurement that has or will be requested” when it was approached by the company in May 2018. Martinelli added, however, that the company “would have fit” into its March 2019 request for proposals, but it didn’t bid on it. She also noted that the government has an avenue to submit unsolicited proposals as part of a separate process for presenting new business ideas. Damstra confirmed that the company didn’t bid on it because, he said, the RFP did not align with what it does. Kate Vrancart, a spokeswoman for the Ontario government, said the province did not issue a request for bids for the services Mobilityview has on offer. “The Ontario Public Service Procurement Directive sets out rules to govern ministries and provincial agencies in their procurement of goods and services for government needs, in order to ensure the use of competitive processes that are open, fair and transparent,” she added. A search of the federal lobbyist registry does not turn up any mention of the company’s name. Officials from Innovation Canada said they are "not aware of any application from Mobilityview." The company’s chairman is Kristian Tear, former chief operating officer of BlackBerry Ltd., and another board member is former chief marketing officer of Rogers Communications Inc. John Boynton, who is also president and CEO of Torstar. Damstra said the company has stayed true to its Canadian roots and it’s currently being let down. “We have wrapped ourselves in the Maple Leaf,” he said. “We could’ve relocated on a number of occasions to California.” The brand doesn’t just cater to government, either. Damstra says Mobilityview is in partnership with “telcos in Canada, US and Latin America.” He added the company is working with Telus Corp. on a reseller agreement, which would see Telus salespeople sell the software. According to a press release, the company joined the Telus Enterprise Mobility Alliance Program in September 2018. Telus confirmed it is working with Mobilityview, but not whether it uses the system itself. “TELUS has an arrangement in place with Mobilityview that allows Mobilityview solutions to be billed on a TELUS mobility invoice,” Richard Gilhooley, spokesman for Telus, said in an email. Rogers spokesman Bill Killorn said his company is not working with Mobilityview. A video demonstration of the product shows the app’s ability to, in real-time, display to the employee and employer what usage is personal and what is business. Damstra said when employees see how much they are using their phones for personal use, they may change their habits. “The employees benefit by eliminating tax risk, getting reimbursed fairly and transparently for business usage of their personal phones and plans, cost reductions through the elimination of carrying a personal device; and additional cost reductions by only paying for the personal usage at a much lower corporate negotiated rate plan,” Damstra added. Mobilityview’s CEO also boasted of the company’s privacy measures as better than the strict General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union. Employees are required by the app to note what personal activities they intend to use the phone for, which will not be seen by employers, who only see what business activity was made on the phone. The employee’s version of the app tracks and shows a breakdown of data usage by app, according to the video. The employer’s version of Mobilityview shows data usage broken into only two categories: business and personal. “We collect only the data that we need to apportion calls, sms, date usage local and roaming,” Damstra said. “We aren’t interested in seeing your pictures, or videos, or downloads. We only use what we need and the device holder has to specifically grant us permission. If the device holder does not grant our app permission we can’t see it.” Peter Straszynki, an employment lawyer at Torkin Manes, said in an email that, so long as employees give consent and the app only monitors usage and not the content of communications, “there is no violation of any reasonable expectation of privacy.” An official at the Office of the Privacy Commissioner did not return a request for comment. Damstra said Mobilityview has done global trials of the system with great fanfare, saying he could not disclose what companies Mobilityview has been working with because of non-disclosure agreements. What they learned from the trials, he said, was that 70 per cent or more of a phone’s use was made for personal purposes. That amount of personal use, he added, is going to go up to 95 per cent in the next-generation 5G world, but he didn’t say where he got the number from. A June Ericsson report says North America mobile data traffic per smartphone is expected to increase to 39 gigabytes per month in 2024, compared to just seven in 2018. Rogers noted in its earnings report on October 23 that it has seen a 50 per cent increase in data consumption on its network since introducing no-overage data plans this summer. Mobilityview is pushing its product to governments as tax laws in Canada and around the world require employers to report types of usage. In claiming tax credits for commercial expenses for phone data usage, employees can only claim an HST credit based on the precise amount of phone data use that was for business, as opposed to personal use, under a certain threshold. In 2010, the CRA adjusted its rules to shield certain personal usage of employer-provided cell phones from being logged as a taxable benefit. It stipulated that the plan should be basic, the cost is fixed and reasonable, and that personal use does not incur charges beyond the basic plan cost. CRA spokesperson Dany Morin said in an email the agency is not aware of any discussions between the Canadian government and Mobilityview and said non-compliance of reporting on the use of cell phones by employers is “an area of low-risk.” Damstra also takes issue with governments buying the latest smartphones that cost exponentially more in taxpayer dollars when older devices would suffice. The federal government has in the past signed years-long contracts with the two largest telecoms, Rogers and BCE Inc., to put in employee hands devices that best suit the needs of each worker. A recent trend has shown an increasing number of Canadian business employees using two phones: one for personal and another for business. The problem, for Damstra, is that these company devices are, in some cases, top-end. He claims Mobilityview can “conservatively” reduce the cost of ownership by 70 per cent. One way the app will reduce costs is by allowing employees to pay for their personal phone usage on a business phone, or claim a tax credit for business use on a personal phone, thus eliminating the need for separate phones. The innovation, Damstra said, would amount to hundreds of millions of dollars in savings. “Are you comfortable knowing, as a taxpayer, that governmental workers are getting very expensive Android Samsung devices and very expensive iPhones and those government workers are playing video games on that, which you as a taxpayer are paying for?” Damstra asked. Damstra says the company has patents in multiple continents: four U.S. patents with another on the way, a patent-pending in Canada, and another one expected in the European Union in the next six months. — With reporting by Ahmad Hathout at ahathout@thewirereport.ca and editing by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca and Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

Cell data tracking company continues lobby push, despite tough reception

News | November 5, 2019

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Cell data tracking company continues lobby push, despite tough reception

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