In the course of various discussions involving RHS Wisley, it has come 
to my attention that my sister's mobile phone appears to be able to 
access the Internet somehow. Does anybody happen to know how that's 
possible?

Obviously the entire purpose for a mobile phone existing is to perform 
wireless communications. Back when my mum was a travelling engineer 
(many, many years ago), her works laptop had wireless Internet access. 
The way it did this was to basically use a normal dialup modem, but 
instead of plugging it in to a land-line, it effectively made a call via 
GSM.

It's still modulating the digital data into audible tones and sends them 
to a server somewhere which demodulates them into digital data before 
sending it over the Internet. It's just that the connection is GSM 
rather than copper.

Oh, and if you thought a 56k modem was slow, try doing it over GSM. Then 
you will know what "slow" actually is. :-P

I'm also aware that various wireless LAN technologies exist. But that 
requires you to either find a location with free Wi-Fi, or somebody with 
an unsecured wireless access point. Neither of these things are 
especially rare (although the latter is strictly speaking "theft"). But 
I'm not sure that's how the phone actually works.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

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