21/02/2020 – The best solution to finding your local mast is now located within this recently updated article. A lot has changed over the years, and this is now the best place to go.
Quite some time ago we published a story about the Ofcom Sitefinder database.
It’s still one of our most-read articles, even though it was first written back in 2011. The Sitefinder database had a simple purpose. It let you locate any mobile phone mast, anywhere in the UK.
For those concerned about hidden transmitters and possible safety issues, it let you see who had kit in a certain location and how powerful the signal was. A great map-driven interface gave you details of the height, the range and the frequency.
It was a useful, heavily-used and friendly website which we were impressed with. After all, many people wanted to use it – you could find how close a mast was to a house, a school or a village. You could see who owned it and whether 3G / 4G was enabled. All useful data and provided by the networks themselves to Ofcom. Even better, it was a revelation to those who hadn’t realised that masts were far closer than they thought – just cleverly hidden as telegraph poles, flag poles, lamp posts or trees.
Trouble is, Ofcom canned it. The last Sitefinder update we saw was on May 2012, but still our earlier post gets hammered daily with people trying to find a way to see where these powerful transmitters are located.
So, although Ofcom doesn’t seem to publish location data for mobile masts any longer, we’ve managed to bring the database back. It’s thanks to Coolsmartphone reader
Bob Hannent, who has used the data to create this online database showing the network operator and location of each mast (as of 2012). Oh, and it’s worth pointing out that even when Ofcom used to publish this data, it was purely voluntary and the networks didn’t have to send the information at all.
If you have trouble with the map below, try heading to the Google table direct, where you can get much more information including site data and transmitter count. Don’t forget, this data is now a few years old, so expect to see T-Mobile and Orange instead of “EE” etc.
Thanks once again to Bob for letting us know about this and for putting it together for all of you to use.