One day about two years ago I was walking my dog and I came across a base station at the top of this hill near me, it said "one2one" on the trespassing notice...

Anyway, after doing a search today on http://www.sitefinder.radio.gov.uk/ just for curiosity purposes, the same base station is now classed as Vodafone's.

Do companies do this..sell base stations to eachother?
What exactly do base stations do?

Cheers

Base station is the node in the mobile network that the mobiles connect to (radio interface). It connects to a Base Station Controller, which connects into the mobile operator's core network and then onto the other networks (including fixed operators), and the internet for data services.

Basically it's like a big aerial that sends and receives calls and data to/from a mobile phone.

Anthony

They do rent space to each other on their base sites, or sometimes on the masts - there was a dispute here about Orange renting some 3G space to Vodafone on a mast nearby

though the majority of the actual masts are not installed / owned by the network operators, as they operate under a licence, there is always a risk they could loose it and have a lot of wasted money.

In england ntl:broadcast owns a LOT of the cellular masts (as well as other radio masts)