Updating WiFi router location in Apple's database?

Still broken. Just spent a total of an hour on the phone with 3 different support tech at Apple. One specialized in iPhone, one in Macbook Pro, and one in Wireless. Ultimately I was told there's nothing I can do, and that things would eventually update, which at this point I seriously doubt.

I asked each about the router geolocation database and none knew of such a thing existing with regard to Apple's location services. The last person I spoke to (Wireless) even talked to their supervisor about it.

I find it hard to believe there is no router geolocation database if I can be in the middle of Colorado and "find my mac" immediately places my iphone and mac *exactly* at my old address in Austin, TX.

I am going to try changing my SSID but I don't imagine that's going to help, as I'd think router geolocation would include the router MAC as well (at least).

Also, just for the sake of providing all information, since opening this ticket I have replaced my old 2008 Macbook with a 2012 Macbook Pro Retina. So, new device, exactly the same behavior.

I read in some other discussion post that iOS devices detect wifi near them (even if they aren't connected) and then do some sort of magic to report the geolocation back to Apple. I have aboslutely no idea if this is accurate, but I can say that since getting an iPhone 5 (I had a Droid 2) a few days go, my iPhone now knows where it is (though it took a few days, during which time iCloud couldn't find my iPhone at all). However, my macbook, on the same wireless network, is still detected as being in the wrong place. *shrug*

iCloud is back to showing "No location" for my iPhone, while the macbook still shows at the old location. The iPhone itself shows the blue GPS dot in the correct state in the US, but a few hours to the West of where I actually am. It's also displaying that location with the huge blue circle around the blue dot (which seems to indicate that your location is an approximation with a huge degree of error). I have spent time outside with the phone and this hasn't helped in terms of GPS locating.

Andy

I turned off wireless on my iPhone, unplugged my Verizon network extender (I saw a note somewhere that location services doesn't work with femtocells), and rebooted my iPhone. Maps now knows exactly where I am (via GPS and Cellular tower data, I assume). I'm going to leave my phone like this for a day or so then re-enable wireless and see if maybe this helps my location get updated. Total stab in the dark.

After confirming several times that my iPhone still knew where it actually was, I re-enabled wifi and connected to my home network. So far, the phone still knows where it is, and so does iCloud. iCloud still thinks my Macbook, connected to the same network, is in Austin, though. My network extender is still turned off, too. I will turn it back on in a second. More updates as things happen...

Thanks for the reply. Here are some more updates as far as trying to get this straightened out.

The iPhone eventually switched back to thinking it was in Austin shortly after I turned my femtocell back on. I can't be sure if turning on the femtocell is what threw it off again, or if more time back on my wireless did it and it was just a coincidence with when I turned the femtocell on.

I also seem to have confirmed that if the phone is connected to cellular via my femtocell, this totally breaks location services even if I'm not on my wireless. I turned the iPhone's wireless off again, rebooted it, and location services failed to determine the phone's location (in maps) so long as my femtocell was still on. Once I disconnected it, the phone was able to accurately geolocate itself. This behavior seems to agree with documentation I found earlier. I am not wondering (speculation) if the iPhone switched back to thinking it was in Austin when I turned my femtocell on, because it fell back to the bad router geolocation once being on the femtocell horked with location services.

So right now my iPhone once again knows where it is, and iCloud agrees. To reiterate, the phone is disconnected from wifi and my femtocell is turned off (so I have just a super weak signal directly from a tower). I'm going to leave it this way for a few days this time, the thought being that maybe it just needs more time for something to settle in (highly technical I know) before reconnecting to my wireless network, at which time I hope it would tell the location database that the router has a new location. We'll see. I have not tried changing my SSID yet, as I suggested I might.

I did more testing and it seems it's definitely connecting to my wireless, not the femtocell, that makes the phone once again think it's in Austin. Why it wouldn't send an update to the router location database, since it has freaking GPS to tell it where it is, is beyond me. It seems like for some reason Apple is trusting some information over GPS, which I just don't understand.

Some perhaps interesting news is that I opened a bug report with Apple about this a few months ago, and a few weeks ago I got some contact asking for information about my router. But then communication stopped. I sort of forgot that someone actually followed up on it. I just checked and Find my iPhone is now working as I think it should be, even when the phone is on WiFi. My laptop isn't showing up yet (though it shows as online), but maybe it will soon?

So I guess if you're having this problem, perhaps open a bug report at bugreport.apple.com.

Thanks. The newest version of Apple Maps doesn't seem to have the options you specified, exactly. I can report a problem and indicate that the pin is in the wrong location, but it didn't look like it was going to ask me to drag around to put the pin where it should be. Perhaps I didn't go far enough, but because my phone is now being located exactly correctly, I didn't want to risk breaking that.

This was interesting though - my Macobok has shown as "online, unknown location" for quite some time now. Just now I went to Apple Maps on my iPhone while on my wifi while I was using the "Find my iPhone" section of iCloud, and something about doing both at the same time seems to have helped. My Macbook now has a location. It's not exactly the same as my phone, but it's close enough for now.

This all remains a mystery.