How often does a cell phone ping the towers?

We set ours, when I still worked for a carrier, at 8 hours. So you turn your phone on, and it pings once, to tell the network it's on,and where it is. With the activity timer set at 8 hours, unless the phone moves to another cell, makes or recieves a cal or text, or starts a data session, nothing happens. read more

Cell tower or base stations never “ping” mobile phones. Mobile phones, on the other hand, do perform regular location updates and often the apps will send regular “keep alive” or checking messages. read more

Mr. Rodrigues has it right, generally. The phone sitting inactive as he describes, there is a parameter that can be set by the carrier. It is basically an activity timer. read more

As "Airplane Mode" is a way to follow the FCC's ban on "inflight use of cell phones because of potential interference with ground networks" 1, someone would have to tinker with a phone's software to disable correct "Airplane Mode". read more