I heard somewhere a suggestion that in a hurricane affected area, it would be a good practice to have one or more cell phones from out of the affected area. Like if we're in SC, we might have one or more cell phones from Indiana. The theory being that while cell phones in this area might not work, the cell phone from Indiana may still be able to communicate. This doesn't make sense to me, because won't the cell phone from Indiana still be affected by the damage to cell towers in this area? Can someone enlighten me? Am I offbase? Did anyone have any success at using cell phones from other areas in Gulf Coast or Florida areas impacted last year?

You are correct. An out of area cell phone will not do you any good. There are two issues that were faced with cell phones during the hurricanes last year. One was the fact that many of the cell phone towers blew down. The second is not related to the towers blowing. In the case of Rita, for several days prior to the storm ever reaching land, with everyone trying to the use their phones, the system gets overloaded and unless you have automatic redial on your phone and unless won't cancel itself after the first few minutes, the chances of actually being able to place a call was nearly impossible. We evacuated from Galveston to Austin and the phones were pretty worthless during the whole evacuation and were very spotty for days afterwords. We actually had walkie talkies and they were much more effective for our needs (of course the range is only a couple of miles).

My sister was in Florida and without phone service a good bit last year, however she stated that they could still send and receive text messages even though they couldn't call anyone. She was fussing at me for not having text messaging capabilities. I have been unable to figure out how that's possible.

Randy is on track about the cell phones. For areas without power, a normal cell phone was not working, but the Nextel walkie talkie phones did. Local circuits were overloaded with calls, so when power did come back online, text messaging was how many people communicated. We had several out of area cell phones, and once power was back, this did help for the overloaded local phone circuits. Also, our satellite phones did not work, and we were unable to determine why and the satellite phone provider could not explain it either.

My suggestion if you are planning is to get some Nextel walkie talkie phones (I think it is actually called direct connect) for contingency purposes.

I live in Lake Charles, evacuated to central Louisiana, and was able to use my cell phone the whole time. I had to redial a few times to get a call through - but otherwise had service. For most people, telephone land line service was never affected in Lake Charles and the surrounding area. (good reason to have the old fashion telephone handy, since there was no electricity for weeks)

In New York at 9/11, cell and land lines were intermittent, some from loss of towers on WTC and other equipment in that area, other times from high usage. You just had to keep trying. My PA phone worked no better than anyone elses NY or NJ phone.

happy, isn't direct connect a part of a package you can purchase for a cell phone? I can remember being at Disney World and my husband and daughter setting up their cell phones to act as walkie talkies. My point being, your FI may already have walkie talkie capabilities without even knowing or using it.

When we had flooding in Houston some years ago, we had cell phones, which were not working, and 2-way pager, which were. They were a real lifeline for us to know what was happening. They use different towers and systems.

Well I was in LA during Katrina - text messages were the only effective way to communicate. We had cell phones work on and off and it usually took several tries to get thru and the calls would drop. Obviously people who left the affected regions could be contacted by e-mail, and we will be prepared with laptops to get the information out to our employees and to customers thru our website.

So are we to understand that text messaging will still work when our cell phones won't??????

It seems that when the circuits are just overloaded, not totally down, that the text messages go through easier than actual phone calls.

I just talked to our Nextel provider and he gave me some good information.

As for the towers, first it needs power. If it does not have power it should have a backup. But, is it working and even if it is working, unless the backup is a generator, it probably has a maximum time of 12 hours. Next, are the land lines to take calls to and from land phones then the microwaves etc.

If you have power but no land lines than you would only have system to system service. This would account for the Nextel to Nextel Direct Connect working when nothing else did. Probably if you called a Sprint cell from another Sprint cell that would have also worked.

He also said that Direct Connect works similar to the text messages whereas each "call" only takes a small time slot and then lets go. Then the "answer" takes another small time slot and lets go. Whereas a traditional phone call takes a longer designated time slot. So if the circuits are overloaded you have a better chance of getting a small text message or Direct Connect call through than a traditional call through.

Also, with text messages, the system will check after it sends it out to see if it was received. If it was not received it will sending it out again. With a phone call it just pushes it out and if it does not go through, oh well.

To add to the discussion, an 'non-local' cell phone could provide some use. I was living in Gulfport, MS at the time of the storm and worked out of Atlanta for 2 months. Even when I was in an area with good towers, my cell phone could not recieve calls. In fact, I could not call my wife's cell phone of the same plan, in the same room (and vice versa). I could make calls to unaffected areas/users ok. My cell phone didn't ring for about 6-8 weeks. When it did, it nearly scared me to death! Text messages were the way to go. That is how I first established communications after the hurricane. The biggest problem there was that many folks had never used the text message cababilities of their cell phone and couldn't figure out how to respond. Perhaps, a pre-paid wireless cell service would be a good idea. Also, if you are without power for several weeks, and have no generator, extra batteries might come in handy.