In Latin America, the device called mobile in Spanish is called cell phone, but despite the normal dialect differences, it is the same device: a mobile phone that uses cellular technology to keep in communication.
Cellular technology is based on radio stations, each with its corresponding coverage area, which are superimposed to cover a wide territory, forming what are called cells or cells (and, hence, their name).
This technology was perfected and applied to mobile telephony in the late sixties, early seventies of the twentieth century. And I say "perfected" and "applied to" instead of invented, because really the cellular technology that allows the operation of our mobile phones is nothing more than an evolution of previous radio technologies.
Although the first modern mobile phone call was made on April 3, 1973 by Motorola technicians, the first commercial precedents for this technology go back to the 1940s, when telephony services were launched in some American cities. radio that allowed calls from cars (where the phones were installed) to landlines.
Little autonomy to speak and a limited scope in terms of radius of action were the characteristics of this service. The former USSR (and, by extension, Eastern Europe), Japan and the Nordic countries also explored their own mobile phone systems based on cellular communication technology, but it is unanimously considered that this began its definitive take-off with that call made. in the spring of '73.
Each of the connection points, linked together by a dedicated network, which can be wired, are called base stations.
These base stations can be very visible, with dedicated towers, or they can be more camouflaged among the urban furniture, so that they go more unnoticed by integrating better with the environment.
Generally, the connection of these base stations to the operator's network is made by means of fiber optic cable, while the connection to mobile phones is made by radio waves at certain frequencies.
These frequencies are regulated by organizations, generally governmental, that ensure the coexistence of various services in the radioelectric space, such as analogue television, digital (the first is extinguished in favor of the second), or mobile telephony, among others.
This is the reason why, historically, different frequencies have been used in different parts of the world, causing problems or, directly, the impossibility of using a mobile phone (cell phone) prepared for one market, in a different one.
Fortunately, and due to globalization, the differences are disappearing, and today it is possible to buy a cell phone in any market and use it in a different one.
The key to cellular technology is in the roaming, which consists in that the terminal (the telephone that the user has) automatically connects to the next cell as soon as it is about to leave the coverage it is currently connected to, being able to maintain communication while moving.
This is possible because the coverage slightly overlaps, and communication is switched by the network to the cell from which the phone receives the strongest signal, while it is still connected to the one that was offering the signal, so the terminal it never disconnects from one and then connects to the next, since this would lose the signal.
Without fear of falling into an exaggeration, the cell phone has undoubtedly been one of the greatest inventions of the last century, since through the cell phone we can not only keep in touch with our friends and family at any time and in any place, But it has also served to tell the world, for example, news that because of the remote place in which they occurred would have been impossible to comment if there was not someone with a cell phone there and also although with a more superficial side the cell phone has served many to close important deals.
