The Mr. Mobile tower tour talks about how cell towers work. In this video, we follow hidden cell towering services. Follow along with this video as it shows you how a cell tower, or cell site, works.
Cell sites in urban areas are often very well-hidden. People don’t like the look of white radio equipment, so to hide them, cell phone companies like T-Mobile and AT&T often go to some rather extreme lengths.
The church steeple at First Parish Unitarian Church, a classic 1840 clapboard meeting house, is one such cell site. Its traditional wood replaced with fiberglass, the steeple makes an excellent location for such a device: It’s high up, and the outward-pointed antennas pose no threat to the parishioners below – something called the “oil rig effect.”
People on the ground are also protected by the inverse square law, a law of physics that governs the strength of electromagnetic waves.
After the short-range radio signal of the cell phone is received by the closest cell tower, it’s transmitted back to the internet via landline and transmitted to the closest cell tower to the phone you intend to be calling. Cell towers are physics that seem like magic.
