Re:US Carriers are just lazy (Score 1)

Hmmm... I think they can probably do it better
than a few miles. Provided that they can pick
you up on several base stations, you can
find the distance to the mobile using the
timing advance and then triangulate.

That's not as unlikely as it seems with such
arrangements as umbrella cells where you have
a big cell for fast moving mobiles travelling
on a motorway covering the same area as a set
of smaller cells for local traffic. It's done
that way to reduce load on the network; you
don't get a whole series of handovers in quick
succession.

Directional antennas are also going to help
- you can get some idea of the direction if
the signal is coming in one one part of the
antenna and not another.