What do you think about making another database in which we collect
further data about cell towers:
Their location, the tower type (UMTS/GSM/LTE/CDMA), how the tower
spreads the signal (radius or sector), maybe an additional picture
showing where you can find it exactly and so on.
This would have two purposes:
1. We could validate whether the submitted data for our first database
is correct/whether a search request for our API uses fake data to
bruteforce it.
2. We could improve our position calculations later on with this data as
we know how the signal spreads around the tower.
(UMTS towers are spreading signals in sectors unlike GSM towers which
spread their signal in a radius around them)
We could talk to owners of existing lists like this huge one:
http://www.senderliste.de/
and import their data.
We could make an app for users to help contributing to this project and
users could validate their information by uploading their GPS position
and linking the found towers to their account.
If we find out that one user faked his uploaded data we could still ban
him/her and delete their uploaded data.
Users would get confidence values.
They would need to apply to do this and talk to one of the mozilla
developers over E-Mail or IRC.
It would be somehow closed but open to everyone who wants to help.
We could engage users by showing them that there is a tower nearby that
we have no information about.
1st way: check available cells and compare to online database->do we
have informations about them?
2nd way: ask database which towers nearby are unchecked, yet->server
checks database for a radius of maybe 10km around the users position and
looks for towers we have no information about
->user gets a ruffly position where to look for the tower and the app
helps by indicating a position where to go to
->the app compares the signal strengths and remebers the users position
and shows the direction the user needs to go to on a compass
Users would need to agree to this linking but we would never show their
usernames in public.
Maybe we could hide the names even with hashes->we can only find cell
towers uploaded by one user but not guess which user uploaded this one
specific tower. (developers could take a look at the database without
any privacy being harmed, the user database itself should be looked from
anybodys access)
Later on we could make this data public like senderliste.de did and show
the positions of cell towers on our map including their range.
And we could provide a map which shows how fast users are able to surf
on the internet in certain areas if they use provider xy.
If our database gets big enough we could even show dead zones.
If users want to be named on this site and even linked to specific
towers they can agree to this. (Optional for users with over ~100 cell
tower uploads -> no guess possible where the user lives exactly)
We could also make a leaderboard that shows which user has uploaded more
information about cell towers. (1 point for 1 cell tower or maybe extra
points for street names/pictures and not onyl their GPS position)
I hope you like my suggestion.
Lets see if it proves popular.
Felix
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