Surveyor

Cellular Labs brought planning to the process. Surveyor lets you easily create a Survey Plan consisting of one or more:

• location surveys
• route surveys
• coverage surveys
• consistency surveys

You can create the Survey Plan before you go out into the field. Of course, you can modify it, as needed, in the field. After creating a Survey Plan, Surveyor will guide you through executing it while it captures all survey data, and then sends it to a server or e-mails it as you wish. You plan the survey, Surveyor configures the equipment, as needed, and guides you through executing it faithfully.

Most of the time, if you want the best you must pay the most. Not anymore when it comes to SIM-based RF surveying. Surveyor is, hands down, the best product in the space, and when it comes to price…

Our main product competitor is manufactured in one foreign country. A second foreign company has exclusive distribution rights and was selling it in the US. In 2025 the second company struck a deal with a large American company to sell it in the US. Right away, the large American company raised the purchase price by more than 50% to almost $70,000, and raised the annual maintenance fee to almost $10,000. Using that product for four years costs over $100,000.

It's kind of a sad story for law enforcement, but it has a happy ending. In 2026 we introduced Surveyor. It runs circles around every other SIM-based surveying device. We charge $7,500 per year for unlimited use of Surveyor and all of its software. We own the device, you use it, and that's great for you. Why? Because if the device fails it's our device and we repair or replace it at no cost to you. When the day comes that the hardware needs an upgrade, that's on us too. The annual fee also includes all software updates and new features. Oh, and it even includes SIM cards and full connectivity for each of Surveyor's internal, cellular modems. Using Surveyor for four years costs exactly $30,000, more than 70% less than using the other device.

What if you’re already using the other device? Well, since you’re already familiar with it, you’ll be in a great position to see how much better and easier-to-use Surveyor is in comparison. Switching to Surveyor will upgrade your equipment and still save you at least $2,000 per year.

The 10-year cost for the other device is over $150,000. The 10-year cost for Surveyor is exactly $75,000. Which brings us to the next point…

How can Surveyor perform so much better and cost so much less? In part, it’s because the other device uses "overly mature technology." That’s a polite way of saying it is old and outdated. For example, once upon a time it was common to use pen drives for moving files around. The other device still uses them. Surveyor sends survey result files, automatically, over-the-air to custom servers, or delivers them to any e-mail address. Take a look at the Surveyor Firsts (include a link) section to see the many features only available with Surveyor.

What about battery life? Old technology is power hungry. Surveyor will run for at least 10 hour on its rechargeable battery, and you can bring along a second battery if you wish.

New features rarely arrive for obsolete equipment. The other device is so old it is almost frozen and new features are introduced rarely. Surveyor was designed, from scratch, using state-of-the art hardware and the most modern software architecture. This allows us to develop, test and roll out new features easily, quickly and automatically. Do you have an idea for a new feature, or even an entirely new kind of survey? We’re all ears. We listen, we act quickly, and we never charge for updates or new features.

With their antiquated hardware and software, how long will it be before they tell you their current device will be discontinued and replaced by a new, more modern one? And do you think they’ll just give you the new device, or will they sell it to you for another $70,000.

That will never happen when you choose Surveyor. It can’t happen because you don’t buy or own the equipment. We own it and we upgrade it, as needed, and at no additional cost to you. And, one day, when its electronics need to be replaced because technology has moved ahead, we will design new electronics and update your device at no additional cost. You pay a flat, annual fee and never a penny more.

You would laugh if someone tried to sell you a brand iPhone 7 (introduced in 2016) for a premium price, so why would you buy an outdated surveying device for the price of a luxury car.

We Design for Safety There are two important safety concerns when conducting RF surveys:

• going unnoticed
• Radio frequency radiation

It’s hard to go unnoticed standing around with a large, ruggedized tablet in hand. Holding a phone draws far less attention.

The other guys just tell you to toss their device in a backpack and carry it around. What they don’t tell you is that simply carrying that device in a backpack that is not designed for human safety will violate 4 of 6 the terms of the FCC filing for the cellular modems used in their device by failing to maintain a certain, safe distance between the device and human bodies.

The other common SIM-based surveying device is produced by a European company and its worldwide distribution rights are held by another foreign company, so maybe they are unfamiliar with US FCC regulation. Either they don’t know or they don’t care.

We would never do that. The Surveyor backpack is custom-designed to ensure Surveyor maintains the required distance between it and its operator.

The other device is manufactured by one European company, sold in the US by an American company and passes between them through a second foreign company. Surveyor is designed and manufactured in the US, using American ingenuity, for American investigators, working in the American justice and legal systems. No wonder it’s best in class.

When you need service for Surveyor, or you have an exciting idea for a new feature, or just have a few questions, you can pick up the phone (or send e-mail) and talk (or correspond) directly with any of the engineers and software developers who know every last thing about Surveyor and are eager to listen and help. When you need service for the other device, you can call the US distributor who has nothing to do with hardware or software. Maybe you can track down the middle company (outside the US), but they also have nothing to do with the device’s hardware or software. You will never get to speak to anyone at the actual manufacturer who is nine time zones away from California. That manufacturer doesn’t pay any more attention to the investigative landscape in the US than we pay to investigations over there.

The other manufacturer is entirely invisible and absent in the US and completely detached from American investigators. Cellular Labs is an American company. The president of Cellular Labs is an active member of the Scientific Working Group on Digital Evidence (SWGDE) which publishes guides, papers and good practices on many forensic topics including RF surveying techniques, timing advance, etc., to which he contributes. We, at Cellular Labs, work day in and day out with American investigators and listen carefully to their requests and needs, always eager to listen and help.

Here is a partial list of features only available in Surveyor:

Drone Ready

Only Surveyor has a built in barometric altimeter and supports full, remote control. This makes Surveyor the only device well-suited for drone-based surveying.

Discover & Verify

Other SIM-based devices use an antiquated surveying technique called "Server/Neighbor." Surveyor can operate in legacy mode and perform Server/Neighbor if desired, but most investigators prefer the Discover & Verify technique that we invented and that is only available in Surveyor.

Server/Neighbor does only half the job. It discovers cells but doesn’t actually register with them and verify data can be transferred. RF scanners (non-SIM-based) aren’t capable of interacting in any way the cellular networks (they can receive but cannot transmit). Discover & Verify does does the whole job. It discovers cells and verifies that it can or cannot actually use the discovered cells (by registering and transferring some data). Pay much less, get much more with Surveyor.

Band-Locking and Cell-Locking

Other SIM-based devices mistakenly use band-locking instead of cell-locking. Locking to a band hides cells with weaker signals behind ones on the same band with even slightly stronger signals. Of course, Surveyor can do band-locking if you wish, but cell-locking, which locks to a specific cell of interest, is usually preferred.

Most Secure

Only Surveyor can automatically fetch software updates and send collected survey data, automatically, to a server or e-mail address using secure communication and encrypted files.

Timing Advance

Scanners cannot obtain any Timing Advance information. Some other SIM-based equipment recently added limited support for Timing Advance. It was difficult for them to do so given the antiquity of their hardware and software, and the implementation is limited to responding to individual, manual requests to obtain individual Timing Advance values. Surveyor was designed with Timing Advance as a core feature. Surveyor automatically captures Timing Advance step-values in the course of Discover & Verify.

Cell Site Mapping

Only Surveyor lets you load as much of your NDCAC cell data as you like. It can easily hold the data for all 9 million cells across all of America (Alaska, American Samoa, Continental, Guam, Puerto Rico, Northern Mariana Islands, US Virgin Islands, etc.) and display cells locations and details on its map display.

Surveyor can download all of your NDCAC cell information. With that information, the Surveyor phone app is able to show all cell locations on its map, and calculate the actual distance to any cell in the US (including Alaska, Hawaii, Virgin Islands, etc.) and compare it to the captured Timing Advance step values it automatically collects. This allows Surveyor to detect when Timing Advance inferred distances are overestimating actual distance (usually due to reflected signals). Only Surveyor has such a deep knowledge of Timing Advance and how expert, American investigators use it.

Real-Time Mapping

You don’t need to wait until you return to your office to see the results of a coverage survey, because Surveyor displays a map and adds points in real-time—as you watch—during the survey. The same is true for all other types of surveys.

Indoor GPS

Every other surveying device relies entirely on its own GPS receiver for location information. Of course, Surveyor includes multiple GPS receivers, but it can also use the GPS system in the phone that’s controlling Surveyor. How does that help? While outdoors, with an unobstructed view of the sky the GPS receiver in the device doesn’t need any help. But what about when conducting an indoor survey? Ordinary GPS receivers typically cannot work indoors. Phones, however, perform a variety of tricks to get GPS readings even while indoors (e.g. using Wi-Fi).

Only Surveyor can display, simultaneously, the GPS status of its internal GPS receiver and also the status of the phone’s GPS receiver, and it will automatically use whichever one is best at that moment, switching back and forth as needed. That’s another Surveyor-only feature.

Interoperability

We are happy to work with all vendors of software for analyzing and presenting investigative data. We will do whatever it takes to integrate Surveyor with any such software system. The only way we will ever fail to successfully integrate Surveyor with any software systems is if the software company simply won’t provide necessary technical information.

Fleece the Police?

Here at Cellular Labs, fleece the police is a game we do not play; never have, never will. In 2026, when we entered the RF surveying space, no more than 1% of Police Departments/District Attorney’s Offices used RF surveying equipment. A major reason was the unconscionably high prices of most equipment. In 2025, what did the other guys do? As the only vendor of SIM-based, RF surveying equipment, they partnered with a giant company that doubled their prices since they faced no competition. In 2026 what did we do? We brought competition to the market with an entirely new generation of highest performance, SIM-based RF surveying equipment and, for the first time, at affordable prices too.

Tired of fleece the police, come to Cellular Labs where we’re dedicated to serving police not fleecing them.