I think they're suggesting something much more simple than that:

SELECT lat, lon FROM tower_list WHERE tower_id=${The one you're connected to};

The key thing is how does the tower_list get populated with the lat, lon fields.

Its basically wardriving.

Where I come from, locations are published by the government/regulator:

https://web.acma.gov.au/pls/radcom/site_proximity.main_page/

interesting! Do you know the license / copyright terms for that data?

I do not, sorry.

Yes and no. They leverage mobile devices to report data. It's like an entire population is wardriving lol.

Yes, it appears that is how they get some of their data: http://wiki.opencellid.org/wiki/Data_sources