Verizon Communications Inc (VZ)

[cintrix]

When the East Coast was hit with 2 hurricanes 4 years ago, cell service was not existant.
What? I don't know where you are getting this from. Maybe your area was down, but I live in one of the worst hit areas during Sandy and never once lost my cell service. We had no landline because we have fios and the backup battery died after a few hours. Read this:

http://qz.com/21909/hurricane-sandy-and-cell-phone-network-service/