Getting cell tower information in an iOS application?

Question

My question is simple but I haven\'t found a good answer anywhere. My question is this: Is there a way through either the iOS SDK or third-party frameworks to get cell tower

Answer 1

The CellStumbler application (CellStumbler at code.google.com) uses undocumented methods in the CoreTelephony framework. There is a CellInfo struct defined which can be queried via the _CTServerConnectionCellMonitorGetCellInfo method.

However, on iPhone-4S - iOS5 the CTServerConnectionCellMonitorGetCellCount always return zero - so no cell info can be queried. Things may look different on a iPhone4/3S since Apple changed the baseband modem from Infineon Gold to Qualcomm mdm6610.

You mal also try to evaluate the built-in FieldTest app (just dial *3001#12345#* to start) which gives you a couple of info related to your cellular network status.