A method for measuring road traffic load based on analyzing cellular communications

Continuously extracting traffic load and speed on roads within the coverage area of a cellular network using only data that arrives to the cellular switch implanted in the following stages: (a) a learning phase, which can include vehicle(s) with a location device (i.e., a GPS system) traveling across the covered routes and collecting cellular data and location data in parallel, analyzing the accumulated data and processing the date to create a reference database; and (b) an operational stage in which communications on the cellular network are monitored continuously, and matched against the reference database in to locate their route and speed. The data analysis and data base structure are provided in a manner that enables in the operational stage fast and reliable initial identification of the vehicle's route, based only on the cell ID of handovers; follow-up forward and backwards of the vehicle's route; and real-time incident detection.