I've talked to two; one who worked for a tower company as late as six months ago, and a representative of my own cell phone company (while trying to determine the exact location of "rocket tower").
The tower guy confirmed what swjaxon had learned from his expert: if the nearest tower is busy, the phone will connect with another.
We see a COW brought in, named "Henderson", BUT since it's temporary/movable, its actual location is unknown. That tower, per my tower guy, would not have been renamed every time it was moved - and only the tower owner would know its position at a certain date and time.
I agree, just looking at the trend in the tower hits. But it's still a vast area, if you consider that radius from each tower hit.
A 13 mile radius is a 26 mile diameter circle.
After the 6:04am hit the next morning (I-515/Russell), the phone is dead. We don't know where it went next.
ETA:
In the James Kim case, where the nearest "town" was Galice OR along a logging road, the retrieval of two text messages from a tower in Glendale, OR (14.5 miles "as the crow flies" BUT we don't knwo the line-of-sight) was part of the solution.
In reading
this analysis, I'm still not sure if we're reading what the article calls "handshakes" or "last usage". Everything I see, is "last usage" because we always have an incoming call/outgoing voicemail check associated with it.
Quote from article:
"Even when people aren't on their cell phones, the handsets try to communicate, or "shake hands," with nearby cell towers every 30 seconds to register their location. Companies maintain records of the handshakes, including when the contact was made and signal strength, which can help pinpoint a phone's location."
Triangulations are based on signal strength -- correct? We don't have that.
It's also unlikely that the phone was hitting those towers, while being carried by a walking person. And since the trend of the tower hits shows a northeasterly direction, it seems that there were stops and starts -- like in a vehicle.
After the phone went dead, it's unlikely the phone stopped moving. Looking at the map, I'm just not convinced that it continued moving in that northeasterly direction.
Since there is a COW tower involved (temporary, brought in for high-usage situations):
Does anyone know what kind of MASS events were held in Vegas the weekend of Dec 12th-13th?
I'm thinking of something that would draw a huge crowd, like at the Speedway, some kind of road ralley, a carnival.
Or even a big convention center event, related to "boys toys" (electronics, vehicles, trucks, off-roading, ATVs).
