I was on a trip out of town a while back... as soon as I crossed into another cellular network boundary, I got a call from the provider's sales droid, telling me how to use their service. They _are_ tracking individual phone movement, IMHO. Not just IMHO... They are tracking individual phone movement. I know this for fact. What happens is this: When you are out driving, your phone is constantly checking the local zone for strength. When the strength goes down, or signal quality is too low, it scans for a new zone. Then it "logs in" to the new zone while "logging out" of the old zone.
Big cities, like LA, have ALOT of zones, none of which are all that big. By knowing which zone one is in, one is leaving, and one is entering, it is very easy to determine where someone is, especially if that zone tracks along a major highway. Then, it's just a matter of time until he's found.
Forgive my ignorance, since I've always viewed cellular phones as being overpriced toys, but if the cellular network _didn't_ track the location of a given phone how could it route incoming calls to it? Some friends who were visiting from New Mexico this weekend told me they had to inform their service provider of where they were going to be so they could receive calls on their cellular phone. We've played with wireless mobile networking around here, and routers need to keep track of individual nodes as they move around. Are cellular phones different? Am I missing something here? -- Lefty (lefty@apple.com) C:.M:.C:., D:.O:.D:.
Lefty (lefty@apple.com) writes: Forgive my ignorance, since I've always viewed cellular phones as being overpriced toys, but if the cellular network _didn't_ track the location of a given phone how could it route incoming calls to it? Some friends who were visiting from New Mexico this weekend told me they had to inform their service provider of where they were going to be so they could receive calls on their cellular phone.
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Within a service area (usually the coverage area of one cellphone system or provider) the problem of incoming calls is handled by the same basic techique as pagers use - a global area wide broadcast of cellphone numbers being called transmitted from one or more transmitters on each cellphone tower. Each cellphone, when it is turned on, scans the paging channels (special frequencies are used for this) to find the loudest one and sits on this channel looking for it's MIN until a call comes in or the signal gets marginal at which time it goes and looks for another paging channel. All the paging channels usually carry all incoming calls for the system (some MTSOs may page a cellphone which has recently transmitted first on the site that was last serving it, but eventually it will get paged on every site if it doesn't answer). When a cellphone hears its MIN being paged it transmits on the frequency paired with the paging channel it is listening to. All the nearby cells listen on the paging response channels and measure the signal strength of the response. The one with the strongest signal gets picked by the MTSO which then sends out a command over the paging channel the mobile is listening to telling it to switch to a traffic frequency and start ringing. Thus the mechanism for contacting local phones is basically broadcast paging. Built into the system, however, is a set of commands to a powered up cellphone that will tell it to transmit it's ID on the paging channel response channel it is listening to without ringing or giving any other particular indication that it has been ping'd. This command can be addressed to a particular cellphone MIN or to classes of cellphone such as roamers that have not registered with the local system yet. Some cell systems use this to automatically track roamer cellphones from non-local systems so they can be paged, virtually all systems will keep track of such roamers when they make calls. This roamer information is passed around between system and system via nationwide and regional databases accessed over packet switched networks connecting the MTSOs. Thus paging can be directed to the system that last saw a particular cellphone. Dave Emery die@pig.jjm.com
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