Nope. It's a local (geographically speaking) slice of a huge database of hotspots. There is a concentration of points downtown, a few points at the local airport, others at touristic destinations nearby. Most are places I've never been at.

It is nothing but a very neat cache. The nerd in me is sad to see it go.

> Are you seeing data that was more than 100 miles away from the places you were at?

Yes, actually. I used the app that was posted and, even after I modified the code to stop fuzzy-ing the data, I was thinking to myself "well, I've never been anywhere close to there".

Ever go up in a tall building? Your phone sees more towers. But actually, we don't know that "towers my phone sees" is the actual mechanism here.

Apple hasn't explained the algorithm they use to determine what location data to send to the phone. Perhaps they're saying "100 miles" because that's what they do -- send tower data for up to 100 miles around the current tower, depending on tower density for that location.

I live in the south of England and some places were in the north. Yes, I would say some of the locations are 100 miles away from me at all times.

Is it possible the cell tower you're locally connected to is aware of its adjacent towers and communicates this information back to the iPhone? If you're traveling at highway speeds, or perhaps on rail, a 100 mile radius won't cover a huge area. Looking at my own data it seemed to be closer to 200-300 miles in some cases. (in rural areas where presumably towers are spaced out further apart)