CELL SITE

Portable telephones even though wireless do not always transmit all conversations totally wireless.  For many long distance telephone calls, and especially if the call is to a wired land land phone, the phone call will actually be sent most of its distance via wires.  The way this system operates is that when a customer uses their portable phone, the cell phone will transmit wirelessly to the nearest cellular base station.  This base station is in a fixed location and there will often be several base stations in this same geographic location.  The location itself is called a cell site.  Once the call has been received at the cell site, the call is often routed into the main telephone system by a means of backhaul - which often can mean that the conversation will now go down a specific type of wire - called a T1, T3, or E1 line to the telephone central office and then to be sent onwards to its destination from there.