A wireless communications technology that allows the use of transponders to send and recieve data/voice over a large geographic area. It divides the region into overlapping cells with a radius of only a few miles. When a cellular phone travels from one cell to another the caller is "handed off" to the next cell without loss of signal. Adjoining cells well never have the same channel (832 max for analog, roughly 3x for digital) frequencies lowering the chance of a dropped call.

A now ubiquitous technology that has contributed to making life for the average North American even more hectic. When such a socially impacting technology becomes popular, the benefits often become marginalized by the problems.

For example, companies no longer see your cell-phone ownership as a convenience; its now a requirement. And the fact that anyone can reach you via cell-phone now grants them permission to reach you at any time.

The end result is that being out of reach has become unacceptable.

Cel"lu*lar (?), a. [L. cellula a little cell: cf. F. cellulaire. See Cellule.]

Consisting of, or containing, cells; of or pertaining to a cell or cells.

Cellular plants, Cellular cryptogams Bot., those flowerless plants which have no ducts or fiber in their tissue, as mosses, fungi, lichens, and algae. -- Cellular theory, or Cell theory Biol., a theory, according to which the essential element of every tissue, either vegetable or animal, is a cell; the whole series of cells having been formed from the development of the germ cell and by differentiation converted into tissues and organs which, both in plants ans animals, are to be considered as a mass of minute cells communicating with each other. -- Cellular tissue. (a) Anat. See conjunctive tissue under Conjunctive. (b) Bot. Tissue composed entirely of parenchyma, and having no woody fiber or ducts. <-- cellular telephone, a portable radio-telephone transmitting and receiving the radio-telephonic signals from one of a group of transmitter-receiver stations so arranged that they provide adequate signal contact for such telephones over a certain geographical area. The area within which one transmitter may service such portable telephones is called its "cell. -->

 

© Webster 1913.

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