I’m so confused, like I press a button and I can talk to someone in Australia without or almost none delay? How is it so fast and how can the person even hear what I’m saying!?
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Think of internet and voice connectivity as different clouds ☁️ and pipes leading to these clouds as in and out connections.
Your Handset -> nearby cell tower connection in your area happens via microwaves when you call your friend in AU from US etc
Nearby Cell-tower -> your Telco’s Datacenter connection happens when cell tower receives request and sends it via underground cable to your Telco’s data-center
Your Telco Data center -> points of interconnect to receiving telco, this is where your Telco data center will forward the request to other telco (your friends phone provider)
Receiving telco -> cell tower -> friend’s mobile phones : this is the same process repeated. Cell towers know which handsets are connected to it, and thus the data center of receiving telco forward the request to the right cell tower which is in the area of your friends house
All the communication happens at the speed of light, so there is hardly any delay in setting up the connection and communication lag. There are more nuances to it terms of circuit switched networks vs packet switched networks etc but we can leave out those details for this eli5
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