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A GSM Cell ID (CID) is a generally unique number used to identify each base transceiver station (BTS) or sector of a BTS within a location area code (LAC) if not within a GSM network.
In some cases the first or last digit of CID represents cells' Sector ID:
In UMTS, there is a distinction between Cell ID (CID) and UTRAN Cell ID (also called LCID). The UTRAN Cell ID (LCID) is a concatenation of the RNC-ID (12 bits, ID of the Radio Network Controller) and Cell ID (16 bits, unique ID of the Cell). CID is just the Cell ID. The concatenation of both will still be unique but can be confusing in some cellid databases as some store the CID and other store LCID. It makes sense to record them separately as the RNC ID is the same for many cells, the unique element is the CID.[citation needed]
A valid CID ranges from 0 to 65535 (216 − 1) on GSM and CDMA networks and from 0 to 268,435,455 (228 − 1) on UMTS and LTE networks.[1]
A number of commercial and public Cell ID databases and services are available:
| Name | Unique cells | Countries (MCC) | Operators (MNC) | Measurements | Free database download | Active project | Data license | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cell Spotting | 0.1 million[2] | 667 | no | CC0 | |||||
| Combain Mobile | >140 million[3] | >240 | >1700 | >131 billion | no | yes | Supports GSM, CDMA, UMTS, LTE and NR via API.[4] | ||
| LocationAPI.org | 157.89 million[5] | 240 | 1712 | 25 billion | no | yes | Supports WiFi, GSM, CDMA, UMTS and LTE technologies via its API.  |
||
| Mozilla Location Service | 28.2 million[7] | 240[8] | 2.7 billion[7] | yes[9] | yes[7] | CC0[9] | Based on crowd-sourced data. Also WiFi database. Cooperating with OpenCelliD[9] and Combain.[10] | ||
| Mylnikov GEO[11] | >34 million | 505 | 3500 | yes | no[12] | Contains data from radiocells.org, OpenCellID and MLS. | |||
| Navizon[13] | 71 million | 239 | 1712 | 22 billion | no | yes | Based on crowd-sourced data. Also WiFi database.[14] | ||
| NetMeterProject.com | 0.2 million | 77 | 174 | 10 million | limited; private use only | no[15] | Only a small portion of the database can be downloaded and for private use only: the measurements where the crowd users accepted the "Creative Commons Namensnennung-Nicht-kommerziell-Weitergabe unter gleichen Bedingungen 3.0 Deutschland" license | ||
| OpenCellID by Unwired Labs[16] | 38.9 million | 222 | 753 | 2.1 billion | yes | yes | CC-BY-SA 3.0 |  | |
| OpenSignal[18] | 0.8 million | 825 | 5.2 billion | no | yes | ||||
| radiocells.org[19] | 0.7 million | 94 | 243 | yes | yes | CC-BY-SA 3.0 | Based on crowd-sourced data. | ||
| WiGLE[20] | 6.2 million | no | yes | ||||||
| CellMapper | no | yes | |||||||
| OpenMobileNetwork | |||||||||
| G-NetWold by Gyokov Solutions | |||||||||
| Skyhook Wireless | |||||||||
| Google Location Services[21] | |||||||||
| Apple Location Services[22] | |||||||||
| Microsoft Location Services[23] |
