How Phone Calls Work: It may only take a second between placing a call and the other person picking it up, but during that time, your voice travels thousands of kilometers. But how does this happen?

How a Phone Call Works: You pick up your mobile phone and place a call. Whether the person receiving the call is sitting next to you or thousands of kilometers away, you can talk to them in real time. This means that as soon as you say something, the other person hears it instantly. How does this happen? How does our voice, emanating from the phone, travel thousands of kilometers in a single motion? Today, we'll learn how a phone call works and how it reaches the other person in the blink of an eye.

The process starts with the phone's microphone

When you call someone, the phone's microphone converts your voice into electrical signals. A microchip inside the phone then converts these electrical signals into computer language, i.e., binary code. This code is transmitted via radio waves through the phone's antenna at the speed of light to the nearest mobile tower. During this process, the phone's system removes background noise and other unnecessary sound from the  voice.

After receiving the signal from your phone, the mobile tower transmits it to the base station. The base station oversees the entire cellphone network. From the base station, your call is routed to its destination. If the call is made from a phone on the same network to another, the base station itself transmits the signal to the tower closest to the receiver's phone. However, if the call is made to another network or a landline, this process takes a little longer.

The long process is completed in the blink of an eye

From the base station, voice data is passed through fiber optic cables and sometimes satellites. This data then reaches a switching station, which acts as the brain of the network. It determines the location of the user receiving the call. Once the location is determined, the voice data is sent to the tower nearest to the receiver, which broadcasts it as radio waves over the air. The receiver's phone then captures these waves, converts them back into electrical signals, and passes them to the phone's speaker. This way, your voice reaches the other person's ears through the phone.

PC: ABP News