Picking up a landline or dialing out with a cell phone is something that most of us do at least a few times, if not more, a day. We do it and expect the call to connect whether someone picks up or we get voice mail. Because we do it so much and have done it all of our lives, we don’t often think about how a phone call really goes through. Just as we can tune into television shows without thinking about it, or we can start our car without knowing how things work, this is something that has more to it than you probably realize.
When dealing with analog phone, your calls move about much like if they were physically going somewhere. It doesn’t seem like it because it is almost instant, but your call goes many places. It must go through your wire and up to a box on the telephone pole. There it is met with other calls coming and going in your area, and then sent to a junction box. Your call is then sent through to the national fiber optics network which then sends your call to it’s destination, even overseas. Fiber optics use light to convey information and is commonly used today for quality and speed reasons.
Once your call gets that far, it is then fed into a computer that can read the number and all the information about your number. It knows your long distance carrier and how to rout the call. It knows what country, city or town, and eventually home where the call should end up. There is a PIC code (Primary Interexchange Carrier) associated with your number that ensures your call goes through as intended by your particular phone company. On the other end of the line, it goes in reverse until someone picks up and hears your voice on the other end of the line. This seems a bit complicated, but as you know, it often happens within a fraction of a second or less. When dialing overseas, you may need to wait a bit longer, but often only a few seconds.