Have you ever stopped to wondered how an Instant Message flies across the world in seconds, or how you’re able to scroll through social media, make video calls and even stream series all from your phone? Behind all of this is a complex network infrastructure doing the heavy lifting and making all of this possible.
Let’s look into the physical Telecom infrastructure keeping the world connected.
- Cell Towers
Cell towers are extremely tall pieces of telecoms infrastructure that send and receive signals to and from your various mobile devices through radio frequencies. When you make use of your mobile data or make a phone call, your mobile device connects to the nearest cell towers to action that request.
- Undersea Cables
We’ve just spoken about cell towers standing high into the sky now let’s focus our attention a lot lower, ocean deep. There are thousands of kilometres of thick, armoured submarine cables on the sea floor that stretch from continent to continent making international communication possible. Without these cables communicating with other continents would be a slower and a lot more expensive.
- Satellites
Let’s focus our attention back in the sky, but this time a lot further up than cell towers, let’s look at satellites. Satellites help connect people and areas that don’t have access to cell towers like remote and rural areas. They support GPS navigation, emergency communication and TV signals.
- Data Centers and Switching Stations
All the information and data that flows through towers, cables and satellites need somewhere to go and this ‘somewhere’ is known as data centers and switching stations. Data centers are where the data and information are stored and processed. Switching stations guide data and phone calls to their correct destinations.
- Power and Redundancy
Telecoms infrastructure relies on a constant and reliable power supply to operate efficiently and are built with backup generators and batteries. These ensure that this infrastructure can keep running for a certain period of time during power outages. Redundancy is also considered and built it. This means that if one route fails, network traffic can we rerouted down an alternative route.
Having a bit more of an understanding of the physical side of telecoms helps us to appreciate just how much goes on behind the scenes and what’s gone into making it possible for us to do some of our favourite things on our mobile devices.
