&gt;1. Cell phones require reception. At my house, cell reception is universally awful for all providers. I may not be able to even make a call to 911 on a cell phone and, if I do, I am not sure I can trust the reliability of e911. Work arounds include in-home Wi-Fi and femtocells, but...<p>Another problem is the way cellphones are over-provisioned;   last time I was in a (minor, no injuries, but noticeable) earthquake, I couldn&#x27;t make calls for some time afterwards.<p>This was back in the day, I was on a nokia communicator, which I mention because it had software such that I could send a text message, and it would keep retrying until it got through. I mention this because I was surprised to find that the behavior of the iphone is different.  You have to manually retry.