mobile phone tracking...

[Dave Brown]

Not specifically Java but my tracking site is all J2EE.. Anyway..

Just wondering if anyone understands how mobile phone tracking works..
at the moment, my site is designed around specific tracking units and
also GPS devices but I would like to also offer the facility of phone
tracking.. But sadly am a little lost understanding the technology used..

It appears some sites offering the service simply require the number of
the phone to track, without any additional software being installed on
the phone.

Anyone any knowledge on this field ?

Rgds,

Dave.

 

[Roedy Green]

Anyone any knowledge on this field ?

From what I have read the way tracking works is this:

1. every phone has a unique serial number chip. You can move it from
phone to phone. It also carries your personal phonebook.

2. As you wander around perhaps 3 different stations can hear the
phone bleating for attention. They each measure signal strength and
triangulate to determine the phone's location and hand off the phone
to the closest tower. Presumably some advanced system might do it the
way GPS does by the phone measuring the time a given tower's mark took
to arrive. The stations don't know of the phone's existence until the
roamer turns it on.

3. Internet providers then discover foreigners roaming in their
territory. They put them in their database, and share data with other
providers so others know the whereabouts of a give serial number chip.
They find out from the home billing company just what services to
provide.

4. Billing is obviously hairy, but in essence means timing calls and
sharing that data with the home billing company and with everyone
getting a cut of the billing pie.

 

[Darryl L. Pierce]

From what I have read the way tracking works is this:

1. every phone has a unique serial number chip. You can move it from
phone to phone. It also carries your personal phonebook.

This is not a universal. SprintPCS, for example, does not use SIM
(Subscriber Information Module) cards for their phones, nor does Verizon.