Although a District Court judge threw out the man's lawsuit against NEC Corporation because of the lack of scientific data, the number of telephone transmission tower permits contested in court has been on the rise ever since. Electromagnetic radiation Cellular telephone networks transmit using microwaves, a higher frequency signal than most other forms of radio communication. While all of these signals are classified as electromagnetic radiation along with visible light and X-rays, they differ from one another in their wavelength. Going from long to short wavelength across the spectrum one finds AM radio, TV, shortwave radio, infrared light, visible light, ultraviolet light, X rays, and gamma rays. AM radio waves can be several football fields long, while gamma rays can be shorter than the diameter of an atom.
Microwaves are part of the shortwave region of the spectrum.
Microwave ovens operate at over 1200 MHz. While microwaves are not much different from the rest of the radiation that bombards us from the moment we are born, the proliferation of cellular transmission towers produces many areas of locally intense microwave radiation. Each cell is a small geographic region covered by a single transmission tower. As you move from one cell to another, your phone call is handed off to a different tower. The more cells there are, the better your reception, because you are never far from an antenna that links you to the rest of the network.