What is the difference between Analog and Digital?
Wireless calls can be transmitted using either digital or analog technology. Analog technology transmits your voice over airwaves to cellular antennas, much like a radio broadcast. Digital technology converts your voice into groups of electronic bits that are “reassembled” into your voice when they reach their destination. Digital transmission allows for greater voice clarity, privacy, advanced telephone features and more capacity.
Digital is precise, meaning that a state of a piece of digital information, at it’s base level is either on or off. This makes it ideal for data processing and computing. (techgeek note, this is established usually by the voltage through a transistor, typically 5+ volts DC is considered “on”, 0.7 or less “off”. Microprocessors have hundreds of millions of transistors) Analog is an ‘organic’ state, where on and off are relative (analog means many variations on the same thing). Pure analog information is best described as higher or lower, which makes it a poor system for computing, but an excellent system for many other things, such as musical tones and variable gauges (like needle gauges – tachometers, speedometers, etc).
Analog cellular is the oldest technology used for cellular calls. It uses a band of frequencies around 800MHz. Analog transmits calls over continuously variable radio waves, similar to FM radio. Analog service is available in 90 to 95% of North America. Call quality is fair to good. Occasionally callers will experience “fast busy” signals if the network is too busy to handle the volume of calls, some static, or even dropped calls. Analog provides limited data services. Digital cellular network standards are CDMA (code division multiple access), TDMA (time division multiple access), and GSM (global system for mobile communications), which use a band of frequencies around 800 & 1900 MHz. Voices are converted to digital 1’s and 0’s for transmission, then converted back to voices at the receiving end. Digital coverage is increasing across Canada and will eventually equal analog coverage. Call quality is improved over analog with less static.
Analog cellular is the oldest technology used for cellular calls. It uses a band of frequencies around 800MHz. Analog transmits calls over continuously variable radio waves, similar to FM radio. Analog service is available in 90 to 95% of North America. Call quality is fair to good. Occasionally callers will experience “fast busy” signals if the network is too busy to handle the volume of calls, some static, or even dropped calls. Analog provides limited data services. Digital cellular network standards are CDMA (code division multiple access), TDMA (time division multiple access), and GSM (global system for mobile communications), which use a band of frequencies around 800 & 1900MHz. Voices are converted to digital 1’s and 0’s for transmission, then converted back to voices at the receiving end. Digital coverage is increasing across Canada and will eventually equal analog coverage. Call quality is improved over analog with less static.
Wireless calls can be transmitted using either digital or analog technology. Analog technology transmits your voice over airwaves to cellular antennas, much like a radio broadcast. Digital technology converts your voice into groups of electronic bits that are “reassembled” into your voice when they reach their destination. Digital transmission allows for greater voice clarity, privacy, advanced telephone features and more capacity.
