How do cellular phones work?

How do cellular phones work?

TJ McClearin (Business Manager, Infinity Wireless, LLC) gives expert video advice on: How do cellular phones work?; What is the difference between a "locked" and an "unlocked" cell phone? and more...

When it comes to cell phone basics, essentially every phone has a serial number, identification number of some sort that is unique amongst every other device that's on the network. With that being said, every time you turn on your cell phone, that number transcribes into your telephone number, into you as a person, your name, your personal information, all that. Once your cell phone is on the network and registered, when it says "Hi, I'm here. I'm so-and-so's cell phone", it's basically saying to the network "I'm available". Then, when a call is placed and when you make a phone call, it basically does what's called pinging a server. Here, it checks to see if the other end is open to receive a connection. When it does this and says "Ok, there is someone here and we'll take a call. What are you going to do?" This is when your phone rings and you say answer or ignore. If you click answer, it sends a message back to the tower saying "I've accepted the call" and then starts transmitting the voice data that goes into the microphone. Then, it gets transferred into smaller pieces of information that can be sent wirelessly over the network to the towers and on to the other end.