Cellular Phreaking
The cellular/mobile phone system is one that is perfectly set up to be exploited by phreaks with the proper knowledge and equipment. Thanks to deregulation, the regional BOC's (Bell Operating Companies) are scattered and do not communicate much with each other. Phreaks can take advantage of this by pretending to be mobile phone customers whose "home base" is a city served by a different BOC, known as a "roamer". Since it is impractical for each BOC to keep track of the customers of all the other BOC's, they will usually allow the customer to make the calls he wishes, often with a surcharge of some sort.
The bill is then forwarded to the roamer's home BOC for collection. However, it is fairly simple (with the correct tools) to create a bogus ID number for your mobile phone, and pretend to be a roamer from some other city and state, that's "just visiting". When your BOC tries to collect for the calls from your alleged "home BOC", they will discover you are not a real customer; but by then, you can create an entirely new electronic identity, and use that instead.
How does the cellular system know who is calling, and where they are? When a mobile phone enters a cell's area of transmission, it transmits its phone number and its 8 digit ID number to that cell, who will keep track of it until it gets far enough away that the sound quality is sufficiently diminished, and then the phone is "handed off" to the cell that the customer has walked or driven into.
This process continues as long as the phone has power and is turned on. If the phone is turned off (or the car is), someone attempting to call the mobile phone will receive a recording along the lines of "The mobile phone customer you have dialed has left the vehicle or driven out of the service area." When a call is made to a mobile phone, the switching equipment will check to see if the mobile phone being called is "logged in", so to speak, or present in one of the cells.
If it is, the call will then act (to the speaking parties) just like a normal call - the caller may hear a busy tone, the phone may just ring, or the call may be answered.
How does the switching equipment know whether or not a particular phone is authorized to use the network? Many times, it doesn't. When a dealer installs a mobile phone, he gives the phone's ID number (an 8 digit hexadecimal number)
happens if you are at a call and another call comes in? A: If a
The earliest telephone switches were hand-operated - that is, they required a human operator to make connections by plugging circuits into a switchboard. When the customer "rang" the central office, the operator scanned the switchboard and connected the caller by plugging into the requested line.
The first rule of effective telephone communication involves making sure both people on the line are receptive. This means that both you and the person you are on the phone with are able to talk. Neither one of you are driving, at work, or with other people who will get upset if you’re on the phone. It is common courtesy to not answer your phone while with other people, so always make sure it is a good time for both of you to be talking. Setting up a time before calling a person is definitely something more people should do because you can make sure you are entirely focused on only the phone call. It is very common for people to get distracted while on the phone, so they are not always completely concentrated on the call. If someone does call you when you are not expecting it and you’re busy, simply tell them that you will call them back later. This will be the more respectful and responsible thing to do considering the fact that you will be giving them your full attention when you are no longer busy with something or someone else. By making sure both people on the phone are receptive, you are ensuring that there will be no misunderstandings or miscommunications between you and the other...
“It’s out of service?” my mom said under her breath. with Cellena going over her minutes, and had her phone shut off just last week! Nobody heard from her the rest of the night…
I can count those kind of calls on one hand and still have room left over. Those calls normally went a bit like this. Please note, it obviously sounds better over the phone.
In April of 1973, a man named Martin Cooper altered the way of communication for the rest of his days and many years to come. He possessed a dream that would better the way we conversed with one another from a distance. Back in those times, the closest thing to “cellular technology” was a car phone made by the AT&A Company but, Martin and his determined Motorola group yearned higher heights and deeper depths for communication- and thus the birth of the first cell phone was in process. Cooper wanted to exceed the limitations of just simple “car conversation”. After consistent tedious hours of production, lasting a several month long period of building, critiquing, and finalizing, the first cell phone was born. The first mobile device was the size of a cinderblock and weighed the equivalence of its worth- a stack of
says in the essay, Our Cell Phones, Ourselves, that “cell phones users harbor illusions about being alone or assume a degree of privacy that the circumstance don’t actually allow.”(470) Cell phone users have a false sense of isolation and are oblivious to the world around them. But in reality they are actually disrupting the world around them.They are so absorbed into their own conversation that they are unaware of people around them. Being completely detached from where they are and transported into someplace at the other end of the phone, exactly how Goldberger does throughout his writing. For example, Paul Goldberger reiterates in Disconnected Urbanism that “You are there, but you are not there.”(473) He also states, “You are either on
Cellular phones are a phenomenon that has engulfed people in the nineties. They have become a common occurrence whether you are waiting in line at the super market or in a movie theatre. One professor at Murray State University said, “Many students are carrying them, I had a student get a call in the middle of a test last semester.” Although many people have accepted the thought of carrying a telephone wherever they go, others have not taken the onslaught of cell phones quite so easily. Cell phones have become part of everyday life, and with the dramatic changes that have been made, there is no sign of their existence diminishing. Today, cellular service is available in all 306 Metropolitan Statistical Areas across the country and all of the 428 Rural Service Areas.
Cell phone technology dates all the way back to 1947. “In that year researchers first developed ideas as to the possibility of creating mobile phones that used "cells" that would identify a user in whatever specific region he or she was initiating the call from” (Cell Phone World). Still the technology was very limited at the time, so much more extensive research was required. In 1968 private companies started getting involved with cell phone development, such as AT&T. The FCC (The Federal Communications Commission) then opened new frequencies and the private companies had the theory of cellular towers. Each tower would be responsible for a particular region. When a customer traveled farther a way from one region it would switch the call to a closer tower with no interruption. In 1977 public cell phone testing had begun. People in Baltimore, Chicago, and Washington were the first to be eligible for cell phone trials. In 1979 a company in Japan began doing cell phone testing with the public. Not until 1983 were cell phones really available. “The year 1988 changed many of the technologies that had become standard in the past. The Cellular Technology Industry Association was created to set realistic goals for cellular phone providers and research new applications for cell phone development” (Cell Phone World). In a way they still were not very accessible to the public, due to their extremely high operating cost to the consumer. Only the very wealthy could afford cell phones. Important heads of cooperation’s, movie stars, and top government officials were able to afford the luxury of a mobile phone.
Cell phones use radio frequencies to transmit signals. Radio Frequencies (RF) are a form of electrical waves similar to those used in radios, microwaves, radars or satellite stations. They are emitted from a transmitter, and received using an antenna. This telephony technology is restricted geographically to small zones called “Cells”. Every cell has a base station capable of sending and receiving radio waves. When a call is started a signal leaves the handheld unit headed to the closest base station. This station answers by allocating a specific channel to the unit. When this “channel” is established, modulated radio frequency signals are both received and transmitted. The head of the user is in the near field of use because the distance from the antenna to the head is a few centimeters. (Blettner & Berg 2000) If the antenna is inside the body of the phone, the exposure to Radio Frequencies is greater. The antenna might be requesting a stronger signal to contest with the interference of the battery or the actual shell of the phone’s body.
Ring! Ring! Hello. Every second billions of cell phones calls occur across the globe. Cell phones have made it so that humans can communicate with each other at ease. Since the telephone’s invention in 1876, it has made human communication easier and added to the convenience of life. Being able to talk to a person that is hundreds, or even thousands of miles away has enhanced our forms of communication. However, when the invention of the first telephone came about, it was only for the elite and required enormous and heavy equipment in order for it to be operable, thus many did not own one. Telephones became major in the 1900s; and eventually a new innovation, the cellular phone, came about in 1973, but still a handful of people did not rely on them, or care for them. The first cell phone was of considerable size and was not available for everyone until around 1992. There are close to 6.8 billion cell phone subscriptions currently and most phones are considered smart phones, cell phones that integrate email, internet, and apps on a touch screen handheld device. The volume of subscriptions of phones are rapidly growing. With the
Smartphones are something we could not live without in our world today. You cannot leave the house without worrying where your smartphone is or even go to bed without making sure it is on the charger. Almost everyone you know has a smartphone, but technology has come a long way since the first smartphone was invented. Most people think of the company Apple Inc. when they hear the word smartphone, but believe it or not, they were not the first ones to invent it. In 1992, the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) created the first mobile phone to incorporate PDA features that include receive faxes and emails, have a calculator, address book, appointment calendar, and a note pad (Sager, 2012). This device was called the Simone Personal
When phones became available to the public they were not considered to be mobile in today’s sense of the word. They were available to have installed in an automobile, they were big and bulky, and they needed and consumed a lot of power to use. The phone networks would only support a few simultaneous conversations. Cell phones since then have made vast improvements in their efficiency, abilities, and size. The first handheld mobile phone wasn’t produce until 1973. The origin...
A cell phone is essentially a two-way radio consisting of a radio transmitter and a radio receiver. When you talk to your friend on your mobile phone, your mobile transfers your voice into an electrical signal, which is then transmitted through radio waves to the nearest cell tower. The network of cell phone towers then replays the radio wave to friend’s cell phone, which converts it to an electrical signal and back to sound. Cell phones transmit radio waves in all directions.
frequency carrier while the user is moving within a telephone service area. In addition to telephony, modern mobile phones support a variety of other services, such as text messaging, email, Internet access, short-range wireless communications, business applications, gaming, and photography. Cell Phones which offer these and more general computing capabilities are referred to as smartphones. Cell Phones are now a way of life in the generation we live in and call home today, and cell phones have changed and benefited our world. By means of texting , making calls, gaming applications, saving people’s lives , helping people while