Slashgeo

Cell ID Databases

posted by tprinty on Wednesday April 23, @11:17AM        Permalink  Trackback URI  Slashdotthis  Diggthis  Del.icio.us
from the hey-i-got-a-question-for-you dept.

As you may or may not know Google Maps is able to pinpoint a mobile device based upon the CELLID of the cell tower that you are communicating on. I was wondering if ther is a database provider of this type of data. I was able to find the following services or databases:

Yahoo Zone Tag
Celldb.org
gsmloc.org
cellspotting.com

Are you aware of any others?

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Location Inference via cellid and the FCC Database [+]

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Please visit the links above for more detail.

• Canadian Cellular Tower Map

  (Score:2, Informative)

  by ertyu (1564) on Wednesday April 23, @11:38AM (#2322)

  I've gone the other way and used Industry Canada's database [ic.gc.ca] to plot the locations of towers in Canada. It doesn't provide the ID, but it does give known locations and operating frequencies for each provider. Canadian Cellular Towers Map [ertyu.org]

  [ Reply to This ]
• E9-1-1 Cell UniqueID

  (Score:2, Informative)

  by krazy17 (1565) on Wednesday April 23, @03:14PM (#2324)

  In 9-1-1 every wireless sector of a tower has Unique ID that contains its address and the direction that the sector faces (N/SW/etc). All of that is stored by a wireless 9-1-1 database provider. The big one is called Intrado. I work for a company doing mapping for 9-1-1, so we get the cell coverage maps, coordinates, direction the sector covers and distance. As well as the unique ID. This information seems to be very heavily guarded by the Wireless companies.

  [ Reply to This ]
• Location Inference via cellid and the FCC Database

  (Score:2)

  by Satri (3) on Wednesday April 23, @03:24PM (#2325)
  ( http://alexandreleroux.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Friday March 17, @05:07PM )

  I found this two-years old story [slashgeo.org], maybe it can somehow help?

  [ Reply to This ]
• OpenCellID

  (Score:2, Informative)

  by rainersimon (1567) on Thursday April 24, @07:24AM (#2328)
  ( http://rainersimon.wordpress.com/ )

  There's also (the rather new) OpenCellID at http://www.opencellid.org/ [opencellid.org] Regards, Rainer [wordpress.com]

  [ Reply to This ]
• Roll Your Own

  (Score:1, Interesting)

  by Anonymous Voxel on Friday April 25, @02:55PM (#2331)

  Tower data is public record, http://wireless.fcc.gov/index.htm?job=databases [fcc.gov]
  I don't see why it would be too hard to roll your own solution...

  [ Reply to This ]
  • Re:Roll Your Own

    (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tomsoft (1577) on Monday April 28, @08:27AM (#2332)

    All these database give you cell position, but did not give you the match between the id and the position! So you knàow that there is a cell at this pos, but you won't be able to associate it with a cell id. Tha's why things like OpenCellID are designed for!

    [ Reply to This | Parent ]