Email can be sent to portable devices a couple of ways...
With a message-capable pager, for example, I could send you an email, to an email address somewhere in the world. It looks up your location and pager number in a database, sends another email to a computer in your local calling area, which parses it, finds and dials your pager number via modem, and sends the text message. You are never on a network...the radio station that sells bandwith to the paging co. is your "receive only" interface to the net.
With a Laptop, you can dial in via "cell modem", and retrieve email. Then you are on a dial up connection to the LAN.
I'm not sure how the email capable phones work, but I suspect it is a combination of the two. No radio signal, of course, but the cell co. can have a special code they send your phone, to indicate "this is a text message, not an incoming call". Somewhere, the email is stored on a PC until your cell phone is accessible, at which point the message download can occur. Again you have a radio connection (2-way this time though) to the net.
Garth. |
