For informational purposes I will show what I use to compare with my stock 
Iphone.  It is an app called emerald time.  Screenshot at: 
https://www.dropbox.com/s/zt6tjrsylrrtrc3/2014-08-04%2008.06.02.png

You can set it up to sync with you own ntp server.  I think. You can just spot 
check it.  

I have never done a rigorous analysis but it appears to be within 1.5s or 
better most of the time.

Doc



Sent from mobile

> On Aug 4, 2014, at 7:38 AM, BIll Ezell <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> LTE does support the long-standard NITZ (network information and time zone) 
> service. It's an easy way to find out just where you are without having to 
> change your TZ settings constantly. In fact, if you go to time settings on 
> HTC Android phones, the 'automatic time update(NITZ)' setting turns on NITZ 
> syncing. iPhones also use NITZ, as do most 3G or LTE phones. But, not 
> necessarily for time.
> 
> NITZ implementation is carrier-optional, although almost all do support it. I 
> know that Vodafone-Austrailia and a handful of other carriers at least at one 
> point didn't support it. Additionally, the standard doesn't specify how 
> accurate the time has to be, and it varies widely across providers. It's 
> usually within a few seconds, but this isn't a high-precision time reference 
> and can be off by minutes. But, a phone can use the timezone information to 
> then localize time from some other time service.
> 
> An alternative to determine what your physical location location is uses 
> lower-level information such as the ECGI (extended cell group identity) or 
> location information from the MME (Mobile Management Entity). Don't you just 
> love telecom? Everything's an acronym and frequently an acronym^2 or ^3.
> Anyway, the phone then looks up the physical location from whatever id it 
> uses, then uses a time service to get the actual time, then localizes it 
> based on the physical location.
> 
> Clearly, just using something like NTP directly isn't all that useful because 
> you have to know your physical location to know what timezone correction to 
> apply.
> 
> I work on cell infrastructure, mostly 3G and LTE (Ericsson), and it just 
> amazes me that phones work at all. It is incredibly complicated and 
> convoluted.
> 
>> Unlike CDMA (where time distribution was an automatic part of the
>> low-level protocol) I suspect the time displayed on many modern phones is
>> not set by the telephony synchronous protocol but rather by IP-over-Wifi
>> packets.
>> 
>> And the packets don't seem to do a very effective job keeping the clock
>> ont he phone correct. My employer gave me a Nokia Lumia 630 "Windows Phone"
>> and its clock has always been off by at least a minute.
>> 
>> There was a few years ago, a very nice article about the effort to repair
>> the clocks in clock towers in many cities. What rang most true to me was
>> "if you visit a town they can't even keep the clock correct, who else knows
>> what else is wrong there?".
>> 
>> Tim N3QE
> 
> -- 
> Bill Ezell
> ----------
> The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck
> will be the day they make vacuum cleaners.
> 
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