The present disclosure provides a method and a system for determining locations of telecommunication ground stations. In one aspect, the method includes creating heat map data set representing air traffic volume at grid units of a geographic region, determining a ground station location at one of the grid units having air traffic volume greater than that of others of the grid units, modifying the heat map data by excluding data representing one or more of the grid units surrounding the ground station location, and repeating the determining and modifying steps until a predetermined quantity of ground station locations is determined.