I did some prodding at US Cellular and I think I've found a pattern. It's using three bytes for sector ID, like T-Mobile, but there also appears to be a pattern lining up the NR NCI with the LTE GCI on the same tower. I've checked four sites in random locations and they all seem to agree, so if this is not an accurate pattern, then it's one heck of a coincidence.
As an example, I was looking at the Open Cell ID data and found 0x9C41BDxxx, which appeared to be the Falling Water site on the south side of Appomattox. Converted to decimal, that's 10240445.
Now that site has two LTE GCIs, 0x7C90E and 0x7D0DE, or in decimal, 510222 and 512222.
It looks like the way it works is that to convert LTE to NR, you double the first two digits, which are the FIPS state code (so 51 --> 102), then stick a 4 in, and then double the last three digits, being sure add leading 0s to make it 4 digits long, and then add 1. That gets you 10240445.
Same story for Evans Hill in West Virginia. 0x83DC9xx --> 540105. 54 --> 108, stick a 4 in, 0105 --> 0210, add 1, NR is 10840211 (0xA56893). Which is what I observed.
I know you used to have "hints" for LTE to line up with CDMA in some select cases where those values aligned; perhaps that could be done again with NR using the LTE data.
I did some prodding at US Cellular and I think I've found a pattern. It's using three bytes for sector ID, like T-Mobile, but there also appears to be a pattern lining up the NR NCI with the LTE GCI on the same tower. I've checked four sites in random locations and they all seem to agree, so if this is not an accurate pattern, then it's one heck of a coincidence.
As an example, I was looking at the Open Cell ID data and found 0x9C41BDxxx, which appeared to be the Falling Water site on the south side of Appomattox. Converted to decimal, that's 10240445.
Now that site has two LTE GCIs, 0x7C90E and 0x7D0DE, or in decimal, 510222 and 512222.
It looks like the way it works is that to convert LTE to NR, you double the first two digits, which are the FIPS state code (so 51 --> 102), then stick a 4 in, and then double the last three digits, being sure add leading 0s to make it 4 digits long, and then add 1. That gets you 10240445.
Same story for Evans Hill in West Virginia. 0x83DC9xx --> 540105. 54 --> 108, stick a 4 in, 0105 --> 0210, add 1, NR is 10840211 (0xA56893). Which is what I observed.
I know you used to have "hints" for LTE to line up with CDMA in some select cases where those values aligned; perhaps that could be done again with NR using the LTE data.