The phone sitting inactive as he describes, there is a parameter that can be set by the carrier. It is basically an activity timer. 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. After 8 hours, the phone will ping again, then be dormant for 8 more hours.
The purpose of the timer, is to not use network resources for a phone that has been off for more than 8 hours. As long as the 8 hours hasn’t passed, everytime an incoming text or voice call comes, the network will “page” the phone, in an attempt to complete the call. If the timer expires, and the phone doesnt’t ping again, the network won’t bother to look for it. You can tell when you call it.
If you call, and the phone rings 2 times (again, a timer and paging protocol defined by the carrier. Most carriers “page” twice, before routing to voicemail, about 2 rings worth), then goes to voicemail, it is likely off, but has been off less than 8 hours. If it has been longer than 8 hours, the caller won’t hear a ring at all, the ne work knows it hasn't “pinged” at the appropriate time, 8 hours. So no network resources are wasted looking for it.
If you get 4, or 5 rings before voicemail, the phone is on, but no one is answering.
Again, there are no “standards” for how these timers are set. The standards make them available, and specifies how they work. Each carrier has internal,practices for how they are set.
The only exception to the above, is if your phone is on a border between two “location areas”, which again are the defined by the carrier according to their preferences. If so, all phones periodically rescan, periodic registration, looking to be sure it's on the strongest cell (the rescan time is also defined by the carrier). If that timer is set at let’s say 5 minutes, every 5 minutes your phone will scan a list of towers, sent to it by the network, to see if it is still on the best tower. If on one scan, tower A is strongest, it will register (ping), and the 8 hour clock starts. 5 minutes later, the phone scans again. If tower A is still the strongest, nothing happens. If for some reason (you moved the phone, even slightly) on the next scan Tower B is now strongest, and B is a different location area, it will register again, pinging tower B, and updating its location in the network. Now, if a call comes, the network knows not to look for you on tower A, so it won’t waste paging resources, it will page on tower B, and any other towers sorftware defined as being part of the same location area. So if your phone is smack dab between two towers, with nearly equal signal strength, the phone could “pimg” every 5 minutes, or whatever rescan time is set. Note that while the phone is scanning, it can’t receive calls, which is why sometimes you call a phone and it goes to voicemail, but you try a minute later it rings.
I can’t recall the IEEE standard, a group called 3GPP develops the standards.
