1015069 - add a timezone lookup based on location

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Cloud Services :: Server: Location, defect)

Description

[Andreas Gal :gal]

Add a timezone database to our geo (and geo-ip) lookups so that FFOS can detect the current timezone based on location. cc Jaime

Comment 1

[Hanno Schlichting]

During a recent Gnome Location Hackfest I talked to a couple people from Gnome/KDE/Qt/Jolla phone. There's some shared interest in this topic. On the gnome side progress is tracked at https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=727698.

Comment 2

[Djfe]

any news on this?

there should be an issue on https://www.github.com/mozilla/ichnaea/issues

Comment 3

[Hanno Schlichting]

This is merely an idea in the backlog, nothing that is being actively worked on.

In order to satisfy the original FxOS use-case, we'll need a lot more information. To my knowledge you can often get the timezone on mobile phones from the cell connection information. And if you can't, I think the timezone setting is part of the initial user setup. It's not clear if the user actually has any internet activity in those early stages of first time phone setup.

A secondary use-case might be readjusting the timezone setting, when a user is traveling and crosses timezone borders. But even for this use-case we'd need a bit more detail, for example if you are traveling you might not have internet connectivity on a flight and won't want to pay roaming data charges in the target country.

The exact use-case we are trying to solve, determines what kind of API this needs. I'm guessing there's a good deal of client/offline logic involved to make this useful. A simple "send server geolocation request -> answer with timezone instead of lat/lon" is easy to build, but I'm not convinced that actually solves anything.

Comment 4

[Djfe]

What about specifiying mnc/mcc ranges for timezones?
Should be accurate enough and can be done offline (the user just need to connect to a cell tower, but doesn't need any internet connection, especially no roaming)

I guess this should even work for users that are roaming unlike geoips (which doesn't work for roaming users, because they get the ip of their home country)

Comment 5

[Hanno Schlichting]

Moved this over to MLS' canonical bug tracker at https://github.com/mozilla/ichnaea/issues/459