Not all mobile customers are treated equally.

That is the conclusion of a new piece in MIT’s Technology Review, which found wireless companies carefully data mine their customers in an effort to keep their best (and most profitable) customers happy, while leaving those who pay substantially less or enjoy an unlimited data plan on hold.

The concept of “big data” — the practice of collecting and analyzing customer usage, payments, and services, has become part of today’s sophisticated data analysis used by wireless companies to target their highest level of service to their best customers.

In practice this means big spenders might cut ahead of others in customer service call queues, be given priority on wireless carriers’ networks, and be pampered with discounts, service credits, and other special offers when service goes awry.

Carriers merge data about network problems—such as how many dropped calls a consumer experienced—with unstructured data such as the transcripts of complaints to customer-service representatives, deciphered by voice-recognition software and searched for angry keywords.

For customers enrolled in expensive “tiered” data plans, the carriers are vigilant to respond with refunds or discounts on re-enrollments; they tend not to be so generous to customers with resource-guzzling unlimited data plans.

The article did not name any specific carriers, but says selective customer-service treatment is “common industry practice in the United States.”

In Europe, disparate treatment goes even further.  When congestion starts slowing down a provider’s data network, some will boot customers with unlimited data plans onto inferior networks which treat the interlopers as second-class citizens, subject to reduced priority and even throttled speeds in some instances.

It is all designed to maximize profits by keeping the most profitable customers happy, even if lesser customers make due with less.

Data mining opens the door to even bigger profits in the days ahead, especially with contextual and location-based advertising that leverages your location with retailers who believe you can be enticed to stop in their stores in return for a discount offer or coupon sent to your smartphone.

“We’re at the beginning of an era in big-data analytics,” says Antonio Rodriguez, a venture capitalist who works at Matrix Partners in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “If you think about the treasure trove of data they have—it’s question of how they tow the privacy line between what they have access to and what they do with it.”