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Where am I? (How to find where you are from your mobile phone without GPS?)

S

Samuel Lopez

Jan 1, 1970
0
Is there a way of finding your location (city, town and/or world coordinate)
within your Symbian application written for your mobile phone?

Is there any service on mobile networks that will return the coordinate of
the nearest base station?

Samuel
 
D

David L. Jones

Jan 1, 1970
0
Samuel said:
Is there a way of finding your location (city, town and/or world coordinate)
within your Symbian application written for your mobile phone?

Is there any service on mobile networks that will return the coordinate of
the nearest base station?

Samuel

Sending a blank SMS to 1715678 used to give you the Lat/Long co-ords of
the nearest mobile tower, although I've heard the service is
experimental and keeps changing. Only worked for Telstra though.
Not sure of its status these days, or a similar service for other
networks.

Dave :)
 
H

Hans-Bernhard Broeker

Jan 1, 1970
0
In comp.arch.embedded Samuel Lopez said:
Is there a way of finding your location (city, town and/or world
coordinate) within your Symbian application written for your mobile
phone?

Not generally. The GSM network obviously knows your location by the
cell you're booked into. If they put their mind to it, they can
pinpoint it down to a couple of meters in optimal conditions, using
signal strengths at neighboring towers and some triangulation. Look
up "LAC" or "CellID" for details.

The tricky question is whether or not they'll allow you, the
subscriber, access to that information. Several network providers
want to exploit this themselves, by offering various "location-based
services" for extra fees, e.g. via WAP, so they're not particularly
likely to let any odd application running on the phone access this
data.

Then there's the question of whether the GSM client device in question
will let software access these data at all, and whether a Symbian
application written by some random persion is allowed to access it.
 
J

Jet Morgan

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hans-Bernhard Broeker said:
Not generally. The GSM network obviously knows your location by the
cell you're booked into. If they put their mind to it, they can
pinpoint it down to a couple of meters in optimal conditions, using
signal strengths at neighboring towers and some triangulation. Look
up "LAC" or "CellID" for details.

Eh ? what ? What country is the original poster in ?

Here in the UK, there are several services for tracking handsets
(to the nearest basestation), but the trackee has to consent to
having their location transmitted (by SMS).

There was a company called "RouteCall" which would provide
location info on any UK mobile handset on demand and without
the trackee knowing. This was actually a test program, but it
was left as an active web page until various people noticed it.

Richard [in PE12]
 
K

Ken Taylor

Jan 1, 1970
0
Jet Morgan said:
Hans-Bernhard Broeker said:
Not generally. The GSM network obviously knows your location by the
cell you're booked into. If they put their mind to it, they can
pinpoint it down to a couple of meters in optimal conditions, using
signal strengths at neighboring towers and some triangulation. Look
up "LAC" or "CellID" for details.

Eh ? what ? What country is the original poster in ?

Here in the UK, there are several services for tracking handsets
(to the nearest basestation), but the trackee has to consent to
having their location transmitted (by SMS).

There was a company called "RouteCall" which would provide
location info on any UK mobile handset on demand and without
the trackee knowing. This was actually a test program, but it
was left as an active web page until various people noticed it.

Richard [in PE12]
UK police got a successful murder prosecution after using a warrant to get
hold of historic cell system data and track a person's movement through the
cell phone network. (Sorry, I haven't got the citation on hand - search BBC
and you'd find it).

Ken
 
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