Hi,
When I first stumbled onto opencellid.org I thought I struck gold. After pointing a browser to that URL one is greeted by an attractive web page titled,
The world’s largest Open Database of Cell Towers
and yet, there is absolutely no Cell Tower information in the opencellid data sets. There is no effort to group cells together that share a tower. The lat/lon values are estimates of the centers of cells, not estimates of cell tower locations. And, of course, since a cell is created by a directional transmitter (not one transmitting in all directions) the location of the transmitter (on a tower) must be at a point on the boundary of the cell it creates, so the cell center and the tower location will never coincide.
I have been trying to stir some interest with my recent posts about re-analyzing the opencellid data to estimate cell tower locations (in addition to the existing center-of-cell estimates), but no interest appears.
Is it fair and reasonable to title a web site, " The world’s largest Open Database of Cell Towers," when the data contained therein provides absolutely no information about Cell Towers? A more accurate title might be:
The world’s largest Open Database of Cellular Network Cells
Perhaps one reason I see many questions about cell tower locations is because people, like myself, are led to believe opencellid.org is, “The world’s largest Open Database of Cell Towers,” when it is really something quite different.
Regards,
Matt