Carrier tracking isn't precise as GPS tracking via the phone. Its frequently a mile or more off. Banks were using it in lieu of a travel notice to see if the card swipe and phone were in the same city. Thats my experience with it. They moved away though and now try to ping the app(silent push) to get an IP or location data since buying location data from carriers is expensive.

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Lammy 3 days ago | parent [-]

> Carrier tracking isn't precise as GPS tracking via the phone.

Not any more. 5G changes this now that the location spying is baked into the cell tech itself. The base stations are literally steering the beam to follow you in order to achieve such high bandwidth. See “5G NR Positioning Enhancements in 3GPP Release-18” (2024): https://arxiv.org/html/2401.17594v1

“New radio (NR) positioning in the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Release 18 (Rel-18) enables 5G-advanced networks to achieve ultra-high accuracy positioning without dependence on global navigation satellite systems (GNSS)”

“Release 18 (Rel-18) NR pushes the boundaries even further, unlocking the potential for applications in 5G-Advanced networks that demand ultra-high positioning accuracy – down to centimeter-level (cm-level)” (emphasis mine)

	▲	hocuspocus 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		The overwhelming majority of 5G cells don't do any of that. Even though modern cellular deployments have increased the positioning accuracy a bit, best in class network telemetry (either embedded or third party probes) that estimate positions from timing advances is still pretty crap in real life. There are other tricks you can use such as "minimization of drive tests" that get the A-GPS position (which again, is not always that accurate, because it's cached), but this kind of telemetry is enabled only on small samples, because it has a non-trivial impact on the network performance. Then I guess you could use straight up illegal ways such as abusing the E911 / E112 location tracking.