Basic Elements and Flow of Mobile Communication

If a short characterization of its content and expression is needed, communication carried over the mobile phone is mainly verbal, short, coordinative and assertive, avoiding explanations and long clarifications (Cornita, 2001). From this perspective, it may result that mobile communication is “poorer” than face-to-face conversation, which simultaneously uses verbal means, paralanguage, and non-verbal means (gestures, mimic, body position, physical contact, extra-corporal objects, and proximity); has higher redundancy; and it is usually emotionally charged. However, technicisation processes have enhanced its complexity, enriching its forms of expression. In mobile telephony, the written SMS is gradually catching up with the spoken communication. Recently, new features like photo transmission and multimedia messages stay at the basis of a promising “iconic” communication, which transmits information about the surrounding context together with visual cues about partners. As previously stated, various communication models have been constructed in order to describe and explain the communication flow and elements in general. They can be useful to identify the main elements of the mobile communication. By and large, mobile communication (verbal, written or iconic) represents a mediated form of interpersonal communication, comprising the main elements of the transmission models: source, message, channel, and receiver. Note that this simple structure is only schematic and should be amended by taking into consideration the constant shift of meaning that the actual usage of mobile telephony produces; the context (intrusion into the public space); the influence of the medium, or the relationship between sender and receiver. Interesting in the technology usage is that, in the absence of one interlocutor, communication turns into information retrieval or even the retrieval of a missed communication loaded on mailbox.

The mediation of communication through technical devices in mobile telephony means that an interpersonal communication of a conversational type (verbally, written) superimposes over another type: communication between technical devices. The "shadowy" technical elements and frames controlling the channels, routes and directions are engaged in a sophisticated extra-personal communication (communication between machines and interfaces) that makes content exchange and interaction possible. For example, the "taken-for- granted" mobility is in fact achieved through the internal communication among control devices: mobile phones, base stations and a mobile switching center. Each mobile phone communicates with the other phone via the base station and the mobile switching center and, as the user travels, the signal is passed from cell to cell. More details of the extra-personal communication flow are presented below:

0. The user decides to initiate a call

1. The phone is powered up and is listened for a SID on the control channel

2. The phone receives a SID and compares it to the SID programmed into the phone. If these match, the phone knows that the cell it is communicating with is a part of its home system. 3. The phone sends a registration request to the Mobile Switching Center (MSC), which keeps

tracks of the phone’s location in a database.

4. The MSC gets the call and tries to find the source in the database aiming to identify the cell. 5. The MSC picks a frequency pair that the phone will use in the cell to take a call

6. The MSC talks with the phone to tell which frequencies to use, the phone and the tower switch on these frequencies and the call is connected

7. As the communicator moves toward the edge of the cell, the cell‘s base station notices that the signal is diminishing. In the same time, the station in the cell the phone is moving toward will see the phone’s signal strength increasing. The two base stations coordinate each other

through MSC and, at some point, the phone receives on the control channel, telling it to change frequencies. As the user travels, the signal is passed thus from cell to cell

8. If the SID on the control channel doesn’t match the SID programmed into the phone, the phone knows it is roaming. A communication between different superior MSC's is established over the validity of the phone’s SID.

A combined schema that integrates both interpersonal communication and extra-personal communication (communication with machines and interfaces) can be imagined and built. A possible third member can be included in communication. The schema is modified accordingly. User 1 User 2 MSC Phone 1 Phone 2 CONVERSATION AL MODEL Phone3 EXTRAPERSONAL

Figure 2. Interpersonal and extra-personal communication frames

How do interpersonal communication and extra-personal communication (from the part of the apparatus element) intertwine in the dispositif? Although communicators seem to be not really aware of the complexity of the underlying system, many of its elements slide into the general representation about the communicational environment. Communication is performed in a virtual sound and graphic mediated "conversation room", which main representation is that of users who can physically move while communicating with one another in a space with expanding boundaries. Topological elements like coverage area, cells, abstract ideas about

mobility, ubiquity, artificiality, immediacy, attitudes towards control, safety, some time and cost constraints are highly relevant for communicators, because they structure the initiation

and pursuing of interpersonal communication, also influencing the way that users exploit the physical space when performing private or professional tasks.

The extra-personal communication emerging from the complex internal organization of the mobile technical infrastructure has distinct features in comparison with interpersonal communication. While human communication emphasizes de-fragmentation, machine communication seems to privilege form; organization; hierarchy; and design over anarchy; anti-form; and chance. As a consequence, some of the former “classical” models of communication (the so-called information transmission models) could be appropriate to understand extra-personal communication, while different approaches are needed for interpersonal communication in its conversational form.

3.1.3. Studying Relations in Mobile Communication: the Mobile Dialogue as a Form of