William wrote:



For military use, absolutely. I wouldn't expect a senior military
official to respond differently.

No, not just for military use, they are coordinating between military,
police, fire, Civil Defense, and other civil agencies, and cell phones
play no part.


Now lets talk about Average Citizen (AC). AC has actually used
cellular telephones IN the 9/11 emergency. Many ACs had successful
communications. AC has greater access to the cellular telephone
system than they have to amateur radio. For many ACs, cellular is
their emergency comms.

Do you doubt it?

It dosen't even work well for the AC when the networks become so
overloaded you can't get a call through. The AC is not participating in
official emergency communicatins, they are making calls to say, "Im OK",
or "turn on your TV", and other such non official emergency calls. When
something like 9/11 happens everyone with a cell phone wants to call
twenty other people making the system usless for any official emergency
communicatioins.
The cell phone network is not a consideration amoung government and
civil agencies for emergency communications, ham radio is.