Telephia is a corporation that monitors mobile phone network traffic in order to make statisitcs, and benchmarks. They check the quality of service, and type of service.
Often they will place their mysterious "tan boxes" in a local ISP's colo server room in order to gain date from it. The way they gather their information can be intrusive to privacy, but im not sure. Maybe they gather information through subvertive methods, and monitor calls because they have nothing better to do.
Telephia collects data both through
deployed receiver networks and drive tests, offering carriers a complete consistent measurement
system for voice quality, call blocking, dropped calls, and coverage. By linking network quality and
marketing information, carriers will now have the ability to better assess the relationship between
network performance and customer acquisition and retention. Additionally, Telephia provides
standardized measurement protocols and performance metrics creating meaningful
internal/external comparisons that can be communicated throughout the company and to
subscribers.