I would say that transmission data goes beyond information that was found in the old phone books. It has that, but it has more than that. It may not have the content of conversations, which is a good thing, but it has information about the location of individuals, sites being consulted, several types of information, which are way beyond what was found in phone books, that I do think is personal data and deserves higher protection than suspicion.
On June 10th, 2014. See this statement in context.