system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: What network did 70’s and 80’s car phones connect to?

How did car phones call people back in the day when there weren’t cell towers all over the place? What were they connecting to? I’ve heard there were car phones as far back as the 1960’s. How could they get on a network to call people that were on landlines?
gpt
There were cell towers, there were just fewer of them and they weren't available in as many geographic areas.  To make up for the sparse distribution of cell towers, old cell phones had far more powerful radio transmitters (about as powerful as CB radios) so that they could broadcast over a much farther range in order to connect with a tower.