Calling Card Finder

Phone Cards Articles

How Long Distance Phone Calls Work

In telecommunications, the term long distance calls refers to phone calls made to an area outside the local area. Long distance phone calls most likely come with long distance charges. These long distance charges are different in every country and it varies between phone companies and the rates are subjected to a lot of competition. International calls are calls made from one country to different countries, and usually subject to much higher charges compared to long distance calls. These calls are billed to the calling party unless the called party accepts a collect call, which is where the receiver gets the bill.

Most of us take long distance calls process for granted. Within seconds, you are able to talk to another person who could be thousands of miles away or even separated by a vast ocean and mountains. Few people actually think of the technical process in making a phone call. Typical long distance phone call begins when you pick up your phone handset at home or at the office. The device turns your voice into an analog signal, or electrical impulse, which travels along the wire. Nowadays, digital signals are also made available by major cable companies, though analog is still the one widely used around the world. In digital phone service, the cable comes into the digital modem which is somewhere inside your house. From there comes the phone signal via a normal telephone wire that is fed from the modem into a normal wall phone jack located somewhere in the house and then feeds the rest of the house its signal. Due to the advancement of technology, there is no longer any need for any phone line to come into the house. Any outside wire like at the plain old telephone system network interface device is disconnected.

Once your voice is converted into signals, it travels through a phone line composed of two copper wires originating in your house. These wires will disappear into a box if you have underground wiring, or are suspended between poles near your house if you have aerial wiring. Once outside, your phone line will join with the rest of the neighbors' lines, and all these cables are spliced into a 25- or 50- pair wire. The analog signal travels along the cable, through the neighborhood, until it reaches a bigger bo, which is the junction connecting your neighborhood wires to the main line running past it. The big box is then powered or activated, and contains digitizers. It is here that your telephone call joins the mainstream or multiplexed line ending in your local switch and the fiber-optic national network. In other worlds, your phone lines work much like your neighborhood streets emptying onto a large highway. Very much like streets, there are smaller pathways or cables that join up at a major intersection to meet with your national network or pathway which connects you to the rest of the country and the world.

The main line may be made of various materials, such as: fiber-optics, co-ax, or copper wires. Basically, they all do the same thing. However, some are ever more efficient and easier to obtain than others. Almost all of the larger phone service carriers have their own fiber-optic networks equal to AT&T in quality, and there are hundreds of smaller companies that are known as "resellers". There resellers lease time on the larger companies' networks and avoid the cost of installing their own wires. Fortunately, this creates an extremely competitive market, which allows the consumer to save money.

<<< Back for more articles