Cellular Phone Technology

Here's a quick overview of cellular phone technology to help you visualize the services you're buying. The "cellular" in cellular phone means that each geographic area covered by phone service is broken up into cells. Somewhere in each cell is a station containing a radio transmitter and control equipment. When you turn on your phone, it sends out a radio signal to the nearest transmitter, which identifies your phone, verifies that you are a customer in good standing, and locates a free channel to carry your call. Each call is carried on a unique frequency. When you leave one cell, your call is seamlessly switched over to a transmitter in the next cell.

The original cellular phone technology was analog-carried on a single stream, like the sound that comes out of your car radio. Digital technology reduces sound to binary information, allowing it to be compressed and reconverted to sound in your telephone. This compression allows more information to be transmitted. More users can be active on a digital system than an analog one, and they can receive other kinds of digitized information, such as images on Cellular Phone Cameras. But this doesn't mean that you necessarily have to have digital service in order to have a good cellular phone. Since analog technology predated digital technology (see Cellular Phone History), you may simply have better analog service in your area. And even if your service is digital, your call may be carried on a combination of analog and digital networks when you're roaming.

Cellular Phone Plans

There are more cellular phone plans available than ever before, with new options coming along all the time. When Cellular Phones first came on the market, users barely had a choice among Cellular Phone Companies, and cellular phone plan options were quite limited. Now you can choose a contract plan or a no contract plan, a monthly plan or a prepaid plan, a plan for you alone, a family plan, or a share plan that lets you share services and airtime among a group of people.