They don't put backup batteries at cell sites any more?

I was in Boynton Beach, FL for hurricane Frances in 2004.  We had
T-Mobile, Sprint and AT&T phones in the house and I'm pretty sure
all of them had battery backup since the phones had service for
hours after the power went off.  Unfortunately the power was
off for 5 days, so all the phones eventually lost service
anyway.  The landline went too, I suspect because wires were
taken out somewhere since it didn't come back until several
days after the power came back on.

So we had no working phones at the house.  We were, however,
able to make the occasional call by going next door and borrowing
the neighbor's Verizon phone, which had also stopped working during
the hurricane but had service back the next day.  When we took
a ride down the freeway a couple of days later it became clear
just why that was; the Verizon cell sites had portable diesel
generators running them while everyone else's were dead all the
way to Fort Lauderdale where they still had power.

I'm not so fond of Verizon, and I'm not sure they behave that
way any more (it's bad for margins?), but in 2004 at least they
seemed serious about keeping their service up in a way that their
competitors were not.

Dennis Ferguson