Where’s the 5G Base??
Hello! This post will detail my method of finding the solution to this challenge which asks for the coordinates of the nearest 5G Base with nothing more than the image below. This two-tiered challenge had me feeling slightly intimidated at first but I figured it would be perfectly suited for putting my knowledge to the test.
To find the 5G bases, it was necessary to identify the exact location of the source image first, but where would I even start? It was clear that this was in a large metropolitan city. Judging by the cylindrical “INFORMATION” post, it would be fair to say that it may be a popular tourist destination. Upon examining this image a little longer, two particular elements stuck out to me. This first one is the white roofing-like structure over the sidewalk. The second one is the little “M” emblem in the lower right corner of the information display.
The roofing over the sidewalk indicated to me that we may be somewhere in Australia. I’ve only ever seen this architectural feature in Australian cities. Zooming in on the “M” revealed that we are indeed in the “City of Melbourne” in small text.
Now that the location has been established, I had to find something else that could allow me to further pinpoint the location. I spied with my little eye, a Sunglass Hut sign in the back. I’ve seen that typeface so many times, I could recognize the sign even if I went blind.
From there, I searched “Sunglass Hut in Melbourne” on Google Maps which turned up seven locations in the downtown area! Using Street View, I narrowed down the location to a corner on Bourke Street and Swanston Street.
Now that a location had been determined, it was time to find the nearest 5G base, but there was only one problem. I didn’t even know what the hell a 5G base was! After googling images of 5G bases, I felt a little better (and smarter). Instead of going up and down the area on Street View to find a base, it made more sense to find out who even provides 5G service in Melbourne, and then proceed from there. A quick search of “5G Services in Melbourne” brought me to this page which not only lists the providers (Telstra, Optus, and Vodafone) but also features an interactive map of 5G coverage by provider. It was a good start, but I needed something that could show me the location of the base stations themselves. A search for “5G base station map Melbourne” led me to Cell Mapper, a nifty resource that does exactly what I was looking for! By simply plugging in the approximate address of the location in the source picture, the map supplied me with 5G bases in the vicinity.
With the location determined, I simply went back to Google Maps and found the coordinates of the nearest base location, which was -37.813092497825245, 144.96558244744512.
Thank you for reading!
