To reply to Liquid Lunch's comment about the phone hunting for another Control Channel, This is perfectly correct, but the phone does not transmit during this time, only when it finds a channel it is happy with will it transmit a burst of info, effectively loggin on.
Regarding the calls made in the past. These were probably on the analogue network AMPS in OZ, ETACS in Europe. You got greater distances for similar power with analogue. Digital (GSM etc) has had to come up with lots of clever DSP tricks to get even close. Also you could get 3 Watt phone for some analogue systems.
CC
Last edited by Crossedcontrols; 25th Aug 2002 at 17:00.