I recently was able to sit in on a presentation that was given by the Arlington County PD on their response to the attack on the Pentagon. The whole thing was very interesting, but something I wanted to mention/ask about here is about cell phones.

It has been well documented that cell phones in their standard mode were near useless on 9/11 in both NY and the DC/MD/VA area. ACPD uses Nextels, and although the actual 'phone' part didn't work, the two-way radio feature did. Also, privately owned phones that didn't work in their normal mode sent and received text messages just fine.

I thought this was very interesting and I was hoping someone who knows more about these things could tell me why one mode would work while the other wouldn't.


Thanks in advance,

Chris.