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It is a matter of safety. Given a national crisis, the cellular networks may go down, but the radio will practically always work.


If something takes out the 215,000 cell towers in the us, I wonder if that something will affect the 27,000 FM Radio towers as well - some of which are co located on the same masts.

Granted, it's easier to broadcast FM and be received


> If something takes out the 215,000 cell towers in the us, I wonder if that something will affect the 27,000 FM Radio towers as well - some of which are co located on the same masts.

After Hurricane Sandy, all the cell towers in Lower Manhattan were out of service - between my roommate and me, were were unable to get any signal on Verizon, AT&T, or Sprint.

Fortunately he had a hand-powered radio (electricity was also out) and we listened to that to determine when it was safe to go out, when the cabs were running, etc.


Cell networks can go down for non-structural reasons. Radio has no network load.




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