How to determine if incoming IP address is from a mobile carrier?

21,146

I have a mobile web site and I needed to do IP geo-location. I had a look at several IP->Location databases. One of which was MaxMind. They have a free database which provides city level accuracy, but they also have a paid for database (for a pretty reasonable fee) that gives you more detail, including what mobile carrier a mobile user is coming in on.

Go to http://www.maxmind.com and put your IP into the demo entry box (its on front page), and you'll see the detail you can get. This is the API you would need from them: http://www.maxmind.com/app/isp

Like I say, I only use the city level detail database so can't vouch for the coverage of the mobile carriers. But during my initial tests, it did always seem to return good values for the UK, Ireland, and Asian mobiles I tested.

Rgds, Kevin.

21,146

henry

Software Developer, motorsports enthusiast, gamer. The usual.

Updated on July 01, 2022

Comments

henry almost 2 years

Does anybody know of a good way (free or paid) to determine if an incoming IP is from a mobile carrier?

There was a previous question on this: API to determine cell carrier?

and the answer was "use an ISP database and match names". I guess I'm hoping that in the year and a half since this question was asked somebody came up with something cleaner?

fingers crossed
henry almost 14 years

That only tells you if the device is mobile, it doesn't tell you anything about what transmission method they used.
Kevin almost 14 years

This will only tell the browser type (and is easily faked). It will not tell if a user is coming in over a mobile connection, or if the user is coming in over WIFI.
Massimo over 12 years

I live in Italy, Bergamo, a city at 45 km from Milan. My ISP is Tiscali. This service reports 'Berlin' ...
rgubby over 12 years

In that case, use the tool to update it (if you haven't already) . It's a community powered tool, so by adding more accurate data it'll be better for everyone
henry over 10 years

They didn't in July, 2010. :) This is what we use today.
Captain Hypertext about 8 years

This was useful to me, since I'm trying to ban some users based on their ip address. I definitely don't want to ban a mobile ip address, because that will cause other users and guests to encounter the ban wall when the address gets reused.
Etienne Martin over 6 years

@jlwarlow is not totally wrong here, the facebook app on iOS actually leaks the carrier info in its user agent.