[addled]

40 million... I knew there was a lot, but didn't realize that many. Another comment says closer to 5 million physical towers, still a lot.

A lot of these towers have GPS receivers for clock syncing as well, don't they?

Back in college I had a geology prof who was using GPS receivers planted in one spot to measure seismic / tectonic movements from one year to the next.

That was over 10 years ago, and I never looked into it much more, but seeing all those dots reminded me again.

I've wondered what kind of resolution they could model with data from the hundreds of cell towers in the area vs the handful of stations they maintained?

[johnthescott]

40 million seems way, way too high for active towers. i doubt north texas area has 200,000 active cell towers.

[BigBalli]

cells, not towers ... worldwide, not in US

[KermitTheFrog]

For now not so much gps installed on Base Stations(towers), case only at CDMA Station GPS was strictly necessary. On UMTS or LTE it’s possible but rarely could be found because it’s required for infrequent used features. Needed time synchro received via transmission.

[addled]

Thanks for clarifying!

[johnthescott]

my guess is these are cell ids, not towers. no way north texas near dallas has 200k towers. also, no mention of active or inactive. 82% of lat,longs are distinct to 5digits (about tree resolution), which implies most towers have only a single cell id. 40mil seems way to high for active.