Are Cell Phones Still Cellular?

Adam Wolf had a response to / correction for the tech terms video we recorded the other day:

Love your work… I’ve worked in “wireless” for about 20 years and just wanted to leave you a quick note about the term “Cell phones” – actually we are ALL still using them. The term comes from the honeycomb like “cells” each service area is divided into. The coverage area is divided into cells in which (originally 1, now perhaps more) a tower was placed to provide coverage and service.

Of course, as the population of users increased, these cells became more divided and specialized, but like cutting up a pie, no matter how small the slice, it’s still a pie.

Yes and no… the technology has changed – the old “analog” system has obviously been replaced by digital (mostly GSM or CDMA here in the US)…. however, while the tech has changed (the phones, the radio systems in the base stations/towers and the switches). the towers remain (for the most part) and so do (all) the original “cells”… with so many more people using the system (when I started in the NYC market, a great day was 100 new customers!) the “cells”/areas have been split and in many cases multiple towers are in the same cell to handle capacity.

They also directionalized the towers. The original one’s were mostly designed to broadcast in ~360 degrees around the tower. Today they are mostly used to broadcast in 1 direction and there are multiple antennae on a tower pointed in different directions – but that’s another story!

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