You pick up your mobile phone and make a call. Whether the person answering the phone is sitting right next to you or thousands of kilometers away, you can talk to them instantly; As soon as you speak, the other person hears it immediately. how does this work? How does the sound coming from your phone travel thousands of kilometers in that moment? Today we will learn how phone calls work and how your voice reaches the other person in the blink of an eye.
**The process starts with the phone’s microphone**
When you talk to someone on a call, your phone’s microphone converts your voice into electrical signals. A microchip inside the phone then converts these electrical signals into computer language—specifically binary code. This code is sent through the phone’s antenna in the form of radio waves at the speed of light to the nearest mobile tower. During this process, the phone’s system removes background noise and other unwanted sounds from your voice.
**How to go beyond the signal tower?**
After your phone receives a signal, the mobile tower sends it to the base station. The base station controls the entire cellphone network. Your call is routed to its destination from the base station. If the call is made to a phone on the same network, the base station sends the signal directly to the tower closest to the recipient’s phone; However, if the call is made to another network or landline, the process becomes a little more complicated.
**A long process completed in the blink of an eye**
Voice data is sent from the base station via fiber-optic cable and sometimes satellite. This data then reaches a switching station, which acts like the “brains” of the network. It detects the current location of the recipient. Once the location is known, the voice data is sent to the tower closest to the recipient, which broadcasts it over the air as radio waves. Then, the recipient’s phone captures these waves, converts them back into electrical signals and sends them to the phone’s speaker. In this way, your voice reaches the listener’s ears through the phone.