What country do you live in, that the cell service won't get swamped during a big emergency? And landlines only useful within five feet of the wall socket? Really? How the fuck has your country not discovered the cordless phone yet? None of your "points" add up.
Landlines also get swamped during emergencies. Been there, done that. Mobile phones have proven themselves more reliable in my experience.
Cordless phones are a pain in the ass, I want to be able to walk around on the phone, and I mean walk around outside or down the street, not just inside the house. Having two phone numbers also sucks, I want to have one number... and I want it to work whether I'm at home or at work or out for dinner or visiting my dad for three weeks. I also want it to be *my* phone number, not shared between me and whoever else lives in my house or apartment.
You know what I think? I think you're some dumbass kid, who doesn't remember the cordless phone because by the time you were growing up, everyone had cell phones. I think you've never been in an emergency in which cell service was unavailable. And I think you get off on looking down on people on the internet, because you can't do so in real life.
Could be true for the guy you're talking about, but I've got a cordless phone that's bundled with my broadband. I only use it three or four times a year.
And I've been through two category 5 cyclones (hurricanes) in the last three years. When the landline phone and tv and dsl dropped out, my 3G kept on working and was a lot more interesting than the radio (which is packed with even more ads when there's a cyclone...). Once the mobile did drop out, but only because a major datacentre got flooded *by ocean water* and the diesel generators ran out of fuel. They had to wait for the sea level to drop before they could refuel them... this took out both cell phones and landlines by the way.
In the following two weeks without electricity, I didn't have any problems keeping my mobile phone charged. The landline and adsl were constantly dropping in and out as they did repair work, but cell phones had priority because they are used by emergency services. So my phone and 3G always worked.