How to find the cell towers near you

Knowing where the nearest masts are helps with practical decisions: where to put a 4G or 5G router, which way to point an outdoor antenna, which carrier is likely to work best at home, or why reception drops in one room. There are four main ways to find them, and they answer slightly different questions.

1. Search an address on a map built from official records

In France, every mobile antenna above 5 watts must be authorised by the ANFR, the national frequency agency, and its location is published as open data. That makes French positions surveyed facts, not guesses.

On Cell Site Map, type an address, a town or a postcode. The page for that area lists the nearest masts with their distance and compass direction, which carriers use each one and which generations (2G to 5G) they broadcast. Each town page also gives the nearest mast per carrier, which is usually the number you actually need: if you are with Bouygues Telecom, the nearest Orange mast does not help you.

On the map itself, use the filters to show only one carrier or only 5G, and turn on sector directions to see which way each antenna faces.

2. Check the regulator's own map

The ANFR runs its own map, Cartoradio (cartoradio.fr). It shows the same declared sites and adds something we don't: the results of official exposure measurements carried out near antennas. Cartoradio is the reference if you need an official document; a map like ours is easier for comparing carriers and finding the nearest mast in a given direction.

3. Use a crowdsourced map

Crowdsourced projects such as CellMapper and OpenCelliD collect measurements from volunteers' phones and estimate where each cell is. They have two strengths: they cover countries with no public register, and they show cell identifiers, so you can match what your phone sees to a specific site.

Their weakness is accuracy. An estimated position is calculated from where phones were when they heard the cell, so it is often a few hundred metres off, and much more in the countryside. Where an official register exists, as in France, use it for the position and the crowdsourced map for identifiers.

4. Ask your phone which cell it is using

The nearest mast is not always the one serving you. Your phone picks a cell based on signal quality, the bands it supports and how busy each cell is. To see the real answer:

• Android: free apps such as NetMonster or Network Cell Info show the serving cell's identifiers and signal level. For 4G the useful number is the eNB ID, which identifies the site. If an app only shows the long cell ID (ECI), our eNB ID calculator splits it into the site and sector parts.
• iPhone: iOS shows much less. On many models, dialling *3001#12345#* opens a Field Test screen with the serving cell's details, but what it shows varies by model and iOS version.

With the eNB ID you can search a crowdsourced map for that site and then compare its position with the official register.

Reading the result correctly

• Distance and direction matter more than the count. One mast 300 metres away in clear view beats five masts behind a hill.
• Check your own carrier. Use the per-carrier nearest list or the carrier filter. In France the four networks (Orange, SFR, Bouygues Telecom and Free Mobile) share many masts, but by no means all of them.
• Masts are not coverage. A register says where equipment is, not how strong the signal is in your living room. Thick walls, terrain and the frequency band all change the result. Our guide on why reception can be poor explains the main causes.
• Registers lag reality a little. A brand-new site can take a few weeks to appear, and a listed site may be temporarily off for works.

In short

For France: start with an address search on the map, note the nearest mast for your carrier and its direction, and confirm with your phone which site you are really connected to. If you plan to move a router or install an antenna, our guides on router placement and outdoor antennas take it from there.