The Wall Street Journal made some small waves today thanks to this report documenting how mobile carriers are selling “vast troves of data” including their customers’ location, travels, data usage and even demographic information. Verizon Wireless has launched a product dubbed Precision Market Insights to sell that kind of data, while the German software behemoth SAP AG plans to roll out an offering to help carriers package that data and sell it to marketing firms.

Network have long struggled to monetize their customers’ data without infuriating them, of course. (Incidentally, they’ve also failed miserably to leverage that information with their own targeted content and services or by building their own mobile ad businesses.) And their customers are right to be concerned that carriers may be inclined to sell data that may seem a little too personal. But I was encouraged to see that the Journal piece didn’t spark a big outcry like it would have in the past. That will increasingly be the case if carriers and their advertising partners can use that information to deliver targeted ads that consumers truly find valuable. Of course, that’s always the challenge in the era of interactive advertising.