Is it true a Mobile Phone cant work if the main Public Telephone Switchboard is damaged?

A public land-line switchboard is the true backbone of base station. When you make a call on your phone the call is sent through the air too a degree but its connected like a standard land-line call . Read reports Push to Talk is better in an emergency.Is it true a Mobile Phone cant work if the main Public Telephone Switchboard is damaged?
no. not true.





cell phones, ALL CELL PHONES, are not good for disaster use. Cell phones use cell sites. cell sites use antennas. cell sites use power supplied by the local power utility.





When the power utility goes down, many cell sites go down.


Cell sites are multi-plexd, they do not have the capacity for every user, and pretty soon, the facility is overwhelmed.


Environmental disasters can take antennas down.


Cell phones do not cover the USA 100%, there are many holes.





There is no public land line switchboard, there is a central office that is automated, it is 100% digital, and run one special software (ESS, SS7).





The cell systems is semi-independant, but is still connected to the PSTN. Connection is digital directly from a port in the CO.





In a real disaster, forget phones, forget push to talk phones, the real answer is 2way radio.Is it true a Mobile Phone cant work if the main Public Telephone Switchboard is damaged?
cell phones operate between the phone and cell tower(s) over RF signal... they are then sent from the cell tower to the switch over T-1 lines... (4G cell networks will be sent over fiber optic lines from the towers to the switch)





if the switch that the cellular voice/data traffic is sent over is damaged, then neither PTT, voice, or data transmissions would be possible over the cellular network...





there are redundancies built into place where if something was to fail on the telephone network, it would not take out all communication... calls could be re-routed to different switches almost invisibly to the user...





your best option in an emergency would be to use licensed amateur radio (ham radio) or be lucky enough to have access to 710-NCS-GETS which will give you priority on the publicly switched telephone network...
no that is not true