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Base IDs and cell tower locations
fmouse
Enthusiast - Level 2

We have very weak cell signal at our house, and none inside it.  I've bought a cell signal booster kit (Uniden U4) with an outdoor yagi antenna which needs to be oriented fairly precisely pointing at a nearby Verizon cell tower.  We're down in a valley and rather out of line of sight of any towers, but I can get 1 bar (c.a. -100 dBm) on top of our house - enough to work with assuming we can get the antenna oriented properly.

I have a couple of questions.

I'm working with the towers maps from cellreception.com and with the hidden Field Test app on my iPhone 4s (see http://lifehacker.com/5929546/see-the-actual-signal-strength-on-your-iphone-with-this-quick-tweak if you're curious).  The Field Test app reports a 3 or 4 digit "Base ID", which Verizon tech support tells me identifies the tower to which my phone is connecting when I'm within a covered area.  I show 3 or 4 Base IDs on my iPhone when standing on our roof, in sequence as our connection is handed off between the towers.  Is there a database or other online resource which can be used to correlate these Base IDs with towers which can be located on the map at cellreception.com?  Having this information would allow us to correctly orient the yagi antenna on our signal booster.

Almost all the Base IDs I see are 3 digit numbers, and we've driven around and about our area in all directions looking at them.  Outside the gate to our property, though, we get a signal with a 4 digit Base ID which I have seen nowhere else in the neighborhood or local area.  Is this possibly the ID of a Verizon Range Extender?  Since these devices are basically VoIP they must identify themselves with some kind of Base ID to keep in step with the protocols on which the system depends.

It's entirely possible that Verizon may restrict general access to any database identifying all their cell tower locations.  Would they identify the locations of specific towers if I were to ask them about specific Base IDs?

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