science

Wireless home phone

Wireless home phone is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Wireless home phone rather than just read about it. In short: A wireless home phone service is a service that allows a regular wired telephone to connect to a cellular network, as if it were a mobile phone. It is an example of a wireless last mile connection to the public switched telephone network, also known as a wireless local loop.

Key takeaways

Wireless home phone belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Wireless home phone to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Wireless home phone from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

A wireless home phone service is a service that allows a regular wired telephone to connect to a cellular network, as if it were a mobile phone. It is an example of a wireless last mile connection to the public switched telephone network, also known as a wireless local loop. A small device, about the size of a home wireless router, contains the necessary electronics which allow plain old telephone service to be provided to one or two telephone jacks on the back of the unit, as well as having a small radio antenna and a transceiver for the wireless side of the connection. LED indicator lights on the front typically show signal strength and voicemail messages waiting. The devices usually cannot provide enough ringing current for more than one phone and one externally powered device, such as a telephone answering device or the base station for a cordless phone. For this reason, it is not recommended to connect these devices to a home's wiring (which also requires the disconnection of the wiring at the network interface device, just as when a cable telephone or other whole-home VoIP service is installed). A rechargeable battery backup is normally provided to run the device during a power outage lasting no more than a few hours, significantly less standby time than a true mobile device. Wireless home phone services provide far more alternatives to existing phone companies than other competitors have been able to provide where local loop unbundling has occurred. Where secondary lines on a cellular plan are inexpensive, the WHP line may cost as little as 10 dollars per month, using the airtime (mobile phone) minutes which are not used by the mobile phones on the plan. Unlimited plans typically run around 20 dollars per month, far less than unlimited plans for actual mobile devices, and significantly less than an unlimited landline, and comparable to measured service with low usage. This has led users to port their existing telephone numbers to their mobile plans, although monthly prepaid service is also available. This also allows for physical portability of home phone service, either temporarily (such as when spending a summer or winter traveling in a recreational vehicle), or when making a permanent relocation to another area code. WHP may also be combined with a mobile hotspot in a single device, which also typically has a less-expensive data plan than a smartphone or a dedicated hotspot device, though still far more per gigabyte than wired broadband Internet. Disadvantages include being dependent on a single source for telephony, such that if the nearest cell tower experiences an outage, there is no landline to use as a backup for anything except emergency calls. The companding, audio level compression, and audio data compression used in mobile telephony also ruin any data signals used by modem-based devices, including fax machines, medical monitoring devices, and even set-top boxes for satellite TV, preventing their use for anything except displaying the caller ID for incoming calls. In the United States, WHP service is offered under various names (usually Wireless Home Phone or Home Phone Connect) by Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile USA, AT&T Mobility, Verizon Wireless, Ting Inc. (via Sprint), and Straight Talk.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Wireless home phone

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Wireless home phone claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Wireless home phone before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Wireless home phone ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Wireless home phone

In research: Wireless home phone appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Wireless home phone in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Wireless home phone is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Telephony, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Wireless home phone outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Wireless home phone in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Wireless home phone means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Wireless home phone out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Wireless home phone in simple terms?

Why does Wireless home phone matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Wireless home phone?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Wireless home phone.