Academia and the private sector have joined forces to develop patented systems that will help the telecommunications industry predict the changing habits of mobile phone users in Australia.

Mobile solutions company m.Net Corporation and the University of Adelaide's commercial development arm Adelaide Research & Innovation Pty Ltd (ARI) have signed an agreement to commercialise the jointly-developed intellectual property.

The team received an Australian Research Council (ARC) linkage grant in 2004, for a project valued at $458,000, to develop new approaches to psychological user profiling in the telecommunications industry. The project’s results are now the subject of a provisional patent. 

m.Net Corporation Director of Research Dr Marisa Maio Mackay said the new approach to user profiling would eliminate labour-intensive manual "tagging" and identify a more personalised, multi-category approach to identify user behaviours.

“This can provide more personalised predictions than other systems, which assign each user to just a single category,” Dr Maio Mackay said.

“The research will allow m.Net to make predictions not just about which users will download which products, but when particular users may be more likely to download particular products.”

Research Fellow Dr Dan Navarro, from the University of Adelaide's School of Psychology, said the new technology incorporated innovative psychological modelling.

“When completed, the components of the research should make it possible to provide accurate product recommendations based on how specific users behave over time,” Mr Navarro said.

ARI Deputy Director Dr Elaine Stead said that the commercialisation agreement illustrated the benefits of collaboration between the private and academic sectors.

"The m.Net work has real-world commercial applications," Dr Stead said. "The project provides our students with an opportunity to work at the leading edge of a global industry that is moving at a fast pace."