OpenCellID
{{Short description|Collaborative community project that collects GPS positions of cell towers}}
{{Infobox website
| name = OpenCelliD
| logo = Opencellid by Unwired Labs.jpg
| logocaption =
| screenshot =
| caption =
| collapsible =
| collapsetext =
| url = {{Official}}
| commercial = Yes
| type = Collaborative cell spotting
| registration = Required for software developers
| language = English
| num_users =
| content_license = [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ {{abbr|CC BY-SA 4.0|Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License}}]
| country_of_origin = France
| owner = Unwired Labs
| author = Thomas Landspurg
| editor =
| launch_date = {{Start date and age|2008|4|2|df=yes}}
| revenue =
| alexa =
| current_status = Online
| footnotes =
}}
OpenCelliD is a collaborative community project that collects GPS positions of cell towers and their corresponding location area identity.
More than 49,000 contributors are registered with OpenCelliD, contributing more than 1 million new measurements every day on average to the OpenCelliD database. As of August 21, 2017 the database contained 35.5 million unique cells and 2.1 billion unique measurements.{{Citation needed|date=June 2020}}
OpenCelliD publishes an aggregate data set of cell locations licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License with the intention of promoting free use and redistribution of the data.
Applications
Data on Cell IDs and their locations can be used to provide location information to mobile devices. Using Cell ID locations to find device location is more power efficient and often faster{{cite book|last=Trevisani|first=Emiliano|author2=Andrea Vitaletti|date=2004 |title=Sixth IEEE Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications |chapter=Cell-ID Location Technique, Limits and Benefits: An Experimental Study |pages=51–60 |doi=10.1109/MCSA.2004.9 |isbn=0-7695-2258-0 |s2cid=9885444 |url=https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:PE7rrFGhIzsJ:cens.ucla.edu/~mhr/cs219/location/trevisani04.pdf+&hl=en&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgHKFmi-GlcLR3V2YvPVlbIvk4HmS6WON4puRJQljsCv1bkTIdyQHZcsH8-bjNxUTosYHNFVwt7i1YVOSA9AANnRdSgaqkOGANynDgoa8VvfG5EhuaB1nI-FR4l8eKzX0bdIw9L&sig=AHIEtbTL86-2OpsT0Or89qX7aanc_Z2AAg}} than using satellite-based navigation systems, although it is less precise because of the lack of known Cell IDs.{{cite journal|author1=Jie Yang |author2=Alexander Varshavsky |author3=Hongbo Liu |author4=Yingying Chen | author4-link = Yingying Chen |author5=Marco Gruteser |name-list-style=amp |title=Accuracy characterization of cell tower localization.|journal=Proceedings of the 12th ACM International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp '10)|year=2010|pages=223–226}} The database is also used to determine the strength of available wireless connections and which mobile phone service providers have coverage in specific geographic locations.{{cn|date=May 2021}}
Data sources
The unique location area identities of the cell towers can be collected by devices that utilize the wireless network provided by those cell towers.{{cite web|last=Kattan|first=Francisco|title=Dynamic Cell-ID: Clever way to Block Google, but will it Backfire?|url=http://franciscokattan.com/2010/02/06/dynamic-cell-id-clever-way-to-block-google-but-will-it-backfire/|accessdate=February 6, 2010}} This data is primarily contributed by smartphone users who have installed apps, such as OpenCelliD{{cite web|title=inViu OpenCelliD - Apps on Google Play|publisher=Google Play|author=Unwired Labs|url=https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.enaikoon.android.inviu.opencellid|accessdate=16 September 2018}} or OpenCelliD Client,{{cite web|last=Wolschon|first=Markus|title=OpenCelliD Client|url=https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=biz.wolschon.android.opencellid.client&hl=en_GB|archive-url=https://archive.today/20130411020355/https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=biz.wolschon.android.opencellid.client&hl=en_GB|archive-date=April 11, 2013|publisher=Google Play|url-status=dead}} and commercial tracking devices such as blackboxes, but also by wholesale data donation by corporations. This is then collected and transferred into the OpenCelliD API database.{{cite web |url=https://wiki.opencellid.org/wiki/API |title=OpenCelliD API|accessdate= |format= }}
Licensing
The OpenCelliD database is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License open content license with the intention of promoting free use and redistribution of the data.
References
{{Reflist|refs=http://money.ca/canadian_money/2017/07/21/unwired-labs-and-enaikoon-announce-transfer-of-maintainership-for-opencellid/}}
External links
- {{Official website}}
- [https://community.opencellid.org/ OpenCelliD Community]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Opencellid}}