I'd like to see a visual comparison between recorded and observed Cell
tower info. It may also help to gauge accuracy in a convenient format.

How much effort would be required to add pins for cell towers (which is
generally public info) on the map?

See: http://www.coveragemapper.com/windmap.php for an example of what I'd
expect from MLS.
On Apr 17, 2014 11:34 AM, "Felix Baumann" <[email protected]> wrote:

> 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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