Cellular communications system featuring a central radio pool/traffic router

A method for transmitting a message from a first phone to a cell phone utilizing a central radio pool/traffic router, the method comprising the steps of:

• receiving a voice signal from the first phone at a switch, the voice signal intended for the cell phone;
• passing the voice signal from the switch to a radio;
• modulating the voice signal at the radio onto a radio channel to produce a modulated voice signal;
• feeding the modulated voice signal to an RF interconnect switch;
• passing the modulated voice signal from the RF interconnect switch to an RF combiner/splitter;
• combining by the RF combiner/splitter the radio channel with other radio channels used by other calls to form a composite RF signal;
• passing the composite RF signal to an optical modulator/demodulator;
• modulating an optical carrier by the optical modulator/demodulator using the composite RF signal, thereby translating the composite frequencies to optical frequencies;
• sending the modulated optical carrier to a base station over an optical fiber link;
• demodulating the optical carrier to produce a composite RF signal;
• and
• transmitting the composite RE signal from the base station to the cell phone.