Thats what I thought. This was on another forum and the guy was suggestion those for situations where the cell towers were down or jammed (9/11 for example). I told him they would do no good then as they work just like other cell phones. On 9/11 the only people getting any kind of wireless through were text message subscribers. They were slow but still worked since they only take a small amout of time to squeeze a message through. I made sure our cell phones from then on were text capable even if it cost an extra fee to use so we have some fallback capability. I keep hoping somehow the phone standards will be raised since everyone uses their phones more and more, espically now with cellular internet and such. I remember years ago signing up for AOL 1.0 and getting charged $69 one month to get nothing but busy signals so I've been staying with small local companies until going cable so I would have a short distance to the connection and hopefully less chance of hitting busy circuits.