We’ve come a long way with our mobile phones. The days of the “phone box” seriously numbered, even school children … and babies(?) have their own handsets. The UK started using some kind of “Radiophone system” as far back as in 1958. The phone was a big black box that was kept in the boot of a car which also housed all the other electronic components.
Today’s mobile phones connect to a terrestrial cellular network of base stations or cell sites. These are then connected to the “public switched telephone network” or PSTN.
These days once you’ve purchased the all-important hand set with all the whizz bang techno apps etc; you have to decide to which of the many mobile phone networks you will register. It’s purely a matter of opinion of course, but if you want to be able to send texts from wildly out-of-this-world areas at any time of the day or night or make a connection from a valley to a mountain top, this appears to be a possible ranking:
No 1. O2
No 2. Three
No 3. Vodafone
No 4. T-Mobile
No 5. Orange (worst)
the above is based on signal strength really.
A few years ago I was amazed when my son made a call from his iPhone (yes I bought it for him in a weak moment) from the USA to the UK from inside a T-Shirt shop to ask his friend what size he was. My phone would do nothing. I was on Vodophone and it wouldn’t even let me text. The world is not a fair place.