Cell Phone Operation for Dummies

cell phone network schematic

If there's a kid (or an insatiably curious grownup) in your life, you really should have a copy of some version of David Macaulay's The Way Things Work around the house. It's well written and profusely illustrated and provides simple discussions of the principles by which everyday objects function. On the other hand, you could just look it up on the internet; however, if you do that chances are fairly good that, now that Google no longer allows you to preferentially block crap sites, you'll end up getting information from a DotD at eHow.com; someone like Alicia Bodine, who took time off from being a self-described cooking guru to answer (not really) the burning question, "How Does a Cell Phone Work?"¹ for ItStillWorks.com.

Now that eHow's been Panda'ed off the top of Google's search results, you can get a fairly authoritative answer to that question. Just wait, however, until the gnomes at Demand Media slot this rubbish into one of their niche sites, and it'll float upward again like a turd in a swimming pool [A note: we'd expected Techwalla, but Leaf Group sent this to ItStillWorks.com and it now shows up on the front page of Google search results: epic fail!]

Whatever the case, Bodine's answer is typically convoluted. It contains the requisite kernel of truth --

"Cell phones... rely on radio frequency to work."

-- a factoid we suspect anyone with half a brain already knows. Alicia's problem, besides that half a brain thing, is that is pretty much as far as she is willing to stick out her neck on a technical topic. Instead of expanding on that "radio frequency" bit, Bodine next tells us that

"The Federal Communications Commission of the United States regulates the amount of radio frequency that is allowed to be used by cell phones at one time. Cell phones use towers, which means that one tower would be regulated to let's say 3,000 phone calls at once." Yup, she goes straight from using radio frequency to the FCC, and in the process manages to conflate the bandwidth of electromagnetic spectrum available to cellular use with the number of calls a tower can handle simultaneously. After we're schooled on the number of cellular towers needed in cities (200 words' worth!) and some throwaway shit on what it means if "your bars are high," Bodine touches on passing calls from tower to tower (two or three sentences). Then it's off to the races again:

"Each cell phone tower has a number of channels increasing the number of cell phone users that can connect to that tower. In fact, there are over 1,664 channels. Again, these cell phones use a radio frequency and users should beware that anyone who gets on the same channel can hear your conversation."

Again with the towers? Clearly, Bodine didn't understand, or answer, the question. Instead, she blathered a partial (and probably out-of-date) bunch of factoids that sort of explain "What Is a Cellular Network?" She never, however, mentioned anything about microphones, transmitters, receivers, speakers, printed circuits, or anything else in the phone itself. We think her answer is insufficient, and since she got paid for that crap anyway, we think she should also receive the Dumbass of the Day award. So there.

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/how-does_4563978_cell-phone-work.html

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