Cell companies should install GPS receivers on cell towers and using triangulation relay GPS location data to cell phones. This would be an inexpensive way to bring GPS functionality to everyday cell phone users.
-- mhuppertz, Nov 20 2004

Cellphone towers don't need a GPS to tell them roughly where they are. They're always in exactly the same place as they were built! (Except for maybe Californian ones, which might end up closer to the seabed one day...)
-- ian_mackereth, Nov 20 2004


Those moving ones are faulty towers.

(w)
-- bristolz, Nov 21 2004


Cell phones are already required (US only, as far as I know) to have location data available to 911 services. They may not have met the deadline, but the requirement is there. My phone (two years old at Easter) has GPS. The part that really ticks me off is that I can't get at the location data. Only E911, and probably sprint, can see the data.

Oh, and the phone recieves signals straight from the satellites, but uses the network to determine location.
-- swamilad, Nov 21 2004


But there's no E911 emergency location service for lost towers yet.
-- Shz, Nov 21 2004


Er... already done without the relay. 3G cellphones use the GPS information from phone masts rather than satellites to determine their location.
-- st3f, Dec 02 2004



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