[nielsnv]

Is there any way my BB knows to what GPRS base station he is connected? In the status menu I can see the signal strength. If my BB can get somehow information on the name (id) of the base station, I can upload this data and maybe get some kind of a tracking service.

I know these base stations have coverage for a large number of miles, but I can see in what part of the country my BB is.

Can you retrieve this information somehow??

Thanks.

Niels

[jbairdjr]

I dont believe the carriers provide this info in the signal you are receiving.

[StevenT]

Actually, all cell phone towers transmit a unique ID.
I've seen programs written for other smart phones that retrieve this information. You could then program your phone, for example, to activate profile 1 when it detected that tower 1 was present, but otherwise activate profile 2 if tower 1 was not present. Thus, this allowed you to set the phone to automatically switch to silent/vibrate mode when you were at your office, but automatically switch to ringer mode when you left your office. Very cool. Unfortunately, I haven't seen anything like this for BB.

[udontknowjack]

I used to be able to get this information from my carrier when ever I asked for it. They would tell me the address of the tower the BB last talked to, for a lost BB, for instance. But after 9/11, they would no longer give out the info. I doubt it is publically availalbe now.

[rsun]

I think there's API's in the JDE where you can get that kind of information, but I haven't seen anyone develop anything publically.

[Soapm]

Do you have tmo? http://www.t-mobiletowers.com/homeTowers.aspx

[CyberJack]

SOAPM: Thanks for this URL. I wish TMO would do a little better with the information on the site. The south bay area of Los Angeles has had 2 GRPRS outages in the last 2 weeks and they have put me through a lot of hassles in reporting/correcting this. Last night the rep claimed that he could map my house and tell me the exact distance from my house to the tower I was connected to, but would not reveal the location of the tower. Thanks again......

[rsun]

Have you gone to http://compass.t-mobile.com ?

It's the BEST coverage site I've ever seen, when I asked Cingular for something similar, their response was that it's impossible to give out such detail, I told them TMobile did it, and they just didn't believe me.

[nielsnv]

Originally Posted by StevenT

Actually, all cell phone towers transmit a unique ID.
I've seen programs written for other smart phones that retrieve this information. You could then program your phone, for example, to activate profile 1 when it detected that tower 1 was present, but otherwise activate profile 2 if tower 1 was not present. Thus, this allowed you to set the phone to automatically switch to silent/vibrate mode when you were at your office, but automatically switch to ringer mode when you left your office. Very cool. Unfortunately, I haven't seen anything like this for BB.

Yes, or you could (when you have this information) transmit this every minute or so to a site/database, so other people can see where you (and your BB) are. That was my original idea.

I'm still hopefull that this IS indeed possible, seen your reaction that smart phones software programmers used the same idea.

Will search further and keep you posted when I have more information available/start working on my app.

Thanks,
Niels

[XDS]

Wirelessly posted (7290: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0) BlackBerry7290/4.0.2 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1)

Don't know if it's any help to you but you probably allready know about MiniGPS and MiniGPS+ (However they don't work on the BlackBerry OS). - Also I believe OnStar using similiar methods with there Location Based Service.

Regards,
~