Patent ID: 7826857

Claim:
A method for locating anonymously idle and busy subscribers so that each subscriber is located on the basis of one message, the subscribers moving between cells of a mobile network, said method comprising the steps of: extracting by extracting means from message traffic one message which is sent from a base station controller of the mobile network to a base station, the one message being extracted from a signaling time slot of an E1 link and including a piece of information about a second time slot of a radio channel that is taken into use during a handover of a subscriber, the signaling time slot of a radio channel determining a current cell of the subscriber and the second time slot of a radio channel determining a new cell of the subscriber, determining by a calculating server a location of the subscriber on the basis of the current cell and the new cell, said location being at least partly situated in the geographical intersection of the current and the new cell, so that the subscriber is located on the basis of only the one message, attaching to information of said location a time stamp disclosing a point of time when the one message was extracted, and storing the location information in a memory, wherein when the current cell of the subscriber is changed to a new cell and the subscriber is moving from the new cell to a subsequent cell, the method comprises the steps of: extracting from the message traffic a further message transmitted in an Abis interface in the mobile network, wherein the further message includes a piece of information about a third time slot of a radio channel that is taken into use during a subsequent handover of the subscriber, the third time slot of a radio channel determining the subsequent cell of the subscriber, and determining another location of the subscriber on the basis of the new and the subsequent cell, determining a distance traveled by the subscriber on the basis of said other location and the location information stored in the memory, and determining a velocity of the subscriber on the basis of the distance traveled by the subscriber and the time stamp disclosing the point of time of the first extracted one message, and on the basis of another time stamp disclosing a point of time of the second extracted further message.