Another Cellular Victim

[Paul Robichaux]

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> 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.

> pgf

That's a feature, not a bug.

When your phone hears an ident message broadcast from a cell whose
system ID doesn't match the home system ID, it will emit a "here I am"
message. The foreign cell can be programmed to send a "welcome,
roamer" message, to log the entry into a file, or whatever.

Within individual systems, there's no built-in capability to follow a
phone. For example, the local BellSouth cellular operator can tell
that _right now_ my phone is in the Harvest cell, and it can later
tell that I've moved to the Decatur cell, but it won't automatically
do so unless asked.

- -Paul

- -- 
Paul Robichaux, KD4JZG      | Catch the wave with Mosaic for CLIX! 
perobich at ingr.com           | newprod -n newprod at poboy.b17c.ingr.com
	       Of course I don't speak for Intergraph.

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