When you speak into a cell phone, a tiny microphone in the handset converts the up-and-down sounds of your voice into a corresponding up-and-down pattern of electrical signals. A microchip inside the phone turns these signals into strings of numbers. The numbers are packed up into a radio wave and beamed out from the phone’s antenna ( in some countries, the antenna is called an aerial.) The radio wave races through the air at the speed of light until it reaches the nearest cell phone mast ( often mounted on a hill or tall building.)
The mast receives the signals and passes them on to an exchange building, from where they are routed onward. Calls made from a cell phone to another cell phone on the same network travel to their destination by being routed to the mast nearest to the destination phone, and finally to that phone it. Calls made to a cell phone on a different network or a landline follows a more lengthy path. They have to be routed into the main telephone network before they can reach their ultimate destination.
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