I've been trying to make an app that uses cell tower id's to determine the location of a bus that you are travelling in. First i need to get this working on a single bus. I have decided to test it on my college bus as it goes through a specific route everyday. We will ask all the students who travel by bus to install the app. Once installed, the app will collect all cell tower ids in the route that the bus goes and create a database of it. Later when a person wants to find out how far the bus is from his pickup, he can use the app.
Now the question is whether i can get cell tower id's of a carrier other than mine, or can i get only my carriers cell tower info.
I'm not 100% on this one, but I think that in order to access carriers outside your own, you would have to have roaming enabled. Do keep in mind that if this is the case, they may charge you for it.