If our phone doesn’t have any bars, how can you still call for help? Will the “Emergency Calls Only” work?

Question

If our phone doesn’t have any bars, how can you still call for help? Will the “Emergency Calls Only” work?

In: 20

Answer 1

Many areas without regular cell coverage still have coverage by emergency cell networks that may not be operated by regular cell providers. In addition to handling emergency calls, these may also give cell service to things like ambulances, police, rescue workers and the likes.

In addition, all cell network are required to handle emergency calls even if it comes from phones that don’t belong to their customers (assuming they support the right frequencies), so if you’re on AT&T but there’s only t-mobile coverage where you are, your phone will connect to the t-mo cell tower but display “emergency calls only” because the t-mo cell tower won’t allow any other transmissions.