Equipped with an electromagnetic wave antenna, often placed on a tall mast, the base station enables communication between mobile terminals (such as mobile phones or pagers) and the fixed part of the digital telecommunications network.
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Below the level of the major telecommunications towers, mobile phone operators run roughly 23,000 base stations. In urban areas, these are almost all rooftop sites or microcells, but in rural areas these are often on towers, frequently owned by BT or Arqiva. The Sitefinder database is an incomplete list of mobile phone base stations in the UK. Since the discontinuation of the Ofcom sitefinder web. OverviewTelecommunications towers in the United Kingdom are operated mainly by . Arqiva operates the transmitters for UK terrestrial and most broadcasting, both and . also operates a number of. .
There are also numerous communications sites in the UK, operated by various wings of the armed forces. Many of the masts and towers at military sites are now marketed to commercial site sharers by Arqiva.. .
The first UK microwave relay towers were built in about 1952 for a television link between Manchester and near Glasgow. A chain of 14 towers, known as "Backbone", running from the Chilterns to Scotland a.
[pdf] In the area of wireless computer networking, a base station is a radio receiver/transmitter that serves as the hub of the local wireless network, and may also be the gateway between a wired network and the wireless network. It typically consists of a low-power transmitter and .
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