Welcome to our very new community forum. 
|
“What’s the best way to begin”, you say? Well, Introduce yourself!
Who are you? (You can be anonymous 
)
What lead you here?
What exciting things are you currently working on?
You can say just about anything you want here - as long as you’re being nice to others.
Hello, I am a consultant in the telecom industry and wanted to be part of this community. I am currently working on researching the cell coverage & infrastructure globally and thought the work that the team is doing here is great.
I was wondering if there’s a guide around how to use the dataset to create some statistics on the number of cell towers by operator/country.
Thanks for your help!
Bader Fazea
Hello Bader, 
Thank you for your kind words. I believe the guys over at www.mcc-mnc.com are already doing similar work. They constantly update their data from a number of different sources.
Another great list grouped by country is on wikipedia (link). I know, Wikipedia isn’t always preferred, but the references do a good job of providing sources.
I hope this helps! You can mail us at [email protected] for more details.
Hi, My name is Minttu. I would like to locate cell towers in India. I have the the Cell ID, MCC and MNC, but I am not sure how to go on from there. Could you help me please?
Best regards, Minttu
Hey Minttu,
Do you want to locate a particular cell tower? If so, you can see our handy guide here: Link
If you want to extract all cells belonging to a particular region, you can follow the guide here: Link
Hi, I am researching global availability/accessibility of technology among farmers. I am hoping to find a way to approximate the range of cell towers in this dataset. It seems (after a bit of research about cell tower range variability) that this is an extremely big task. Does anyone have advice on an approximate (even crude) way to approximate cell tower range?
Thanks!
Mollie
Hey Mollie, thanks for reaching out!
I believe there are three levels challenges here:
1 is relatively easy to determine. I believe you’ll find reports of fertile land in each country. You’ll have to convert these area’s in terms of coordinates.
2 can be done by extracting cells present for those areas. (we have a topic in this forum that explains how to do that)
3 Can be done by understanding the radio type. (https://www.telcoantennas.com.au/site/guide-to-mobile-networks). Each radio type has an approximate coverage range. If you extrapolate an area for each cell, you’ll get approximate coverage in any particular coordinate.
Hi Sagar,
Thank you for your advice! This is very helpful. I just have a few more questions about determining cell tower coverage. I assume you mean that I can use the radio type (e.g., UMTS, GSM) to determine the radio frequencies that each radio uses, and from there determine the approximate distance that the frequencies would attenuate in a flat terrain. However, after reading up more on each radio type, I realize that they each use a wide range of frequencies, so the attenuation would also be wide ranging for each tower. Would you then suggest that I just approximate a range of coverage from the potential frequencies for each tower? Or can you think of a way to be more specific in determining range?
Thanks!
Mollie
Mollie, getting into frequency bands would make the process challenging. Plus, OpenCellID wouldn’t be able to tell you what frequency the cell is operating on. I suggest using the radio type to estimate a coverage range. It is a fairly straightforward approach.
Also, i would suggest ignoring terrains and their effects on coverage - that would complicate things further.
Hey team, Baba here YouTube video ears open personal and family safety, retired wife and disabled with voice issues hearing aids so need to use third party IP-Relay like sprint some info asked is sensitive but must give to verify self lost wallet few days ago credit cards drivers license so much more.
Glad to learn and follow developers.
Baba
Hello! I participate in a survey project of cellular antenna towers. I am looking for an external consultant to help me understand technical aspects such as the relationship between BSIC, CELLID and other topics.
If you are interested, do not hesitate to contact me.
Regards!
Hello everyone , I am hackerbait indeed . Growing up my family was with that stupid man a kin thing and we lived just a short walk from that big white thing thats always listening to all the world that looks like epcott center only far less cool . Home of the national softball association . My entire life ive been monitored . I have temporal lobe epilepsy and musicogenic siezures . All i want is to be rid of the nosy people who constantly make my phone get on their crappy base stations to spy on me . ( f u Leah Sommerville ) She is one of the worst . I know one of the rules was to be nice but she is no nice . Messing with peoples minds is her expertice , particularly her lcd hypnosis work she does for dod . I wish to have my anonymity and my privacy for once . Any ideas ? This is not a joke . Its possible im a little crazy but its not like i had a choice .
Hello! I’m a computer engineering student, I’m working on my master thesis about crowd-sensing and truth-discovery. I love crowd-sensing applications because they allow users to solve complex problems that only big companies could face.
Hello, I am a US EE, and have worked on the designs of some cell chips. I now get headaches, memory problems, blocked sleep, and some other symptoms from being too close to cell towers. I’ve moved to Poitiers France near a school. There is a law here that towers can not be placed near schools. However, I’m gettting nailed by something. I’ve found your website, and indeed it says I"m sitting under a GSM tower. It is registered and confirmed. However, I don’t see it. Perhaps it is inside a building?? I would like some help finding it and reporting it. Does someone have a directional antenna for finding these things? How did the data get into the database? I’m also curious to know if it is accurate – I was recently at a conference in another country in a city on the coast, and thought to check your map when getting a room, but your map showed cell towers at co-ordinates over the ocean. Any assistance appreciated! Thanks. This site may well be a Godsend.
Hello, I wish I could help you. You can try an app by one of our partners. (Here). They use our database. I believe this will make it easier to find the cell. I have to say, its not a certainty, all cells we have are approximations based on measurements. It can be off by 100-300 meters in rare cases.
Hello, I am a software engineer in the telecom based company. I am working on to get the cell tower signal strength for all available network provider in a particular region.
How can we achieve this using opencellid database?
Best regards,
Praveen
Hi Praveen,
The opencellid dataset has
You can find list of all the MNC’s and MCC’s here. You can map cells to telecom providers by cross-referencing ‘MNC’ to the ‘net’ column in the dataset.
If you want to understand coverage, you’ll have to map cells and then extrapolate coverage based on radio type.
Hi Sagar,
Thank you for your advice. This is really helpful. In the opencellid dataset averageSignal and unit value is always 0.
I assume cell tower signal strength value not covered in the opencellid dataset. If yes what is the column name?
Praveen, A cell can have a coverage range, but signal strength is a property of the device connected to that cell. Your phone shows signal strength based on its distance from the cell (among other things).
averageSignal is just the average of the all the signal strengths values we received as a part of measurements from OpenCelliD users. It does not directly talk about the coverage range of the cell tower itself.