It is almost certain that any CyberPunk tourists to London will own one or more Mobile Phones.
Obviously these are now a core part of our modern communications society, but they are also increasingly being used for surveillance and snooping, by law enforcement and national security agencies, and by commercial vested interests, where they can get away with it.
GSM mobile phones (the vast majority, due to the relatively slow uptake of 3G PP
technology, the handsets for which in the UK are all also GSM capable) share out their government licensed radio frequency bands (900 Mhz and 1800 MHz for GSM and 2100MHz for 3G PP) by allocating a Network Provider, Base Station, Channel etc. "colours" " to each Mobile Phone Base Station transmitter, so that each "cell" around a particular transmitter does not interfere with its neighbouring cells.
In the sparsely populated open countryside or at sea, the cells cover approximately 35 kilometres (20 or so miles)
However within cities like London, the density of Base Stations and micro-cell transmitters is far greater than most people realise.
Here is an image published reluctantly by the UK Government agency which regulates the telecommunications and broadcasting industries and which allocates the radio frequency spectrum monopolies or licence free radio bands (such as it the 2.4GHz band used for WiFi and Bluetooth and some wireless CCTV cameras etc.). They deliberately make it hard to find from the front of their website and the data is out of date by up to 3 months, but it is still of interest: Ofcom Sitefinder website.
This map shows all the Mobile Phone Network Operators' Base Stations,- Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile, O2,and Three - so any one individual phone will be handshaking with up to about a fifth of the total number in the area shown.
More on Location Based Services and Communications Traffic Data:mobile phone tracking:
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