I know that there are several providers and most of them were out. I might
be wrong about Verizon but most of the cellular phone were out of action
which was my point. Because if that's why most people have cellulars so that
no matter where they are or what happens they can contact their family etc.
But now as far as im concerned cellulars are not reliable.

"Big AL" wrote in message
. net...
Wrong

Verizon cellular worked great in Manhattan during outage. Made and
received
16 callsi in 3 hrs..No busy signals or others. All calls came through and
we initiated without problems!


"mad amoeba" wrote in message
. net...
I was affected by the recent blackout in North East. That got me
thinking
of
how would
one communicate during such an event. Electricity including phones were
out.
Cellular phones didn't work either. So the only way of receiving
informaiton
was by radio.
My old Sony wm-gx670 did quite nicely. But what if I would need to
communicate with
my relatives or even cops to let them know of an emmergency. If
telephone/cellular/internet
are not available what are my other options? Let's say people I want to
communicate with
are more than several miles away in an urban area. That makes CB radio
useless--right? So
then as far as I understand using ham radio is my only option. With that
you
can either get in
touch with your relatives directly, provided they have ham radio as
well,
or
you can call
some person in an area without blackout and tell them to call
police/ambulance etc if that's
what you need.

Not knowing much myself about scanners/shortwaves/hams myself I want to
ask
you guys
with more experience if the below piece of equipment is what I need.

As far as I understand this is an handheld ham radio which also
functions
as
a scanner and
can also receive on a shortwave band. So it will allow me to communicate
with people
far away even in urban setting, it is portable and it will also allow me
to
monitor news as
well as police/firefighters etc. Am I right?

Yaesu VX-2R
http://www.universal-radio.com/catalog/ht/0176.html

the price is kind of steep but for all-in-one product I would be willing
to
pay it.