How do cell phones always display the correct local time? Do the cell towers broadcast it to the phones? And if so, where do the towers get the correct time?
by 
Cherokee2000
ANSWERS: 1
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The phone company has several servers. These servers communicate with other public web servers that broadcast the time according to atomic clocks around the world. The time on the servers is broadcast to the computers running the towers, which communicate with client phones. If the phones are setup to auto-sync the time, then they adjust their time according to what the tower tells them. Basically when you turn your phone on it tells the network: Hey, I'm ____ model of phone, with sim card number ____. I'd like to register. The tower checks the server records to see if the phone is a client phone or a phone from another network. Then it checks to see if there's any waiting messages for the phone, etc. It sends any waiting information as well as network information (like time) to the phone which interprets it and does whatever is necessary (tell you you have a msg, change the clock, etc.). Hope that breaks it down for you.
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