I got mine, I am out in the boonies with no cell service at my house. I actually have to go at least 10 miles or more to get cell service. I actually thought I wouldn’t get it until I got into service area.
That doesn’t work with my theory that cell towers send it out to phones in their service area. If a cell tower can send me an emergency alert then why don’t I have service here?
A mystery...
They might boost the power on the tower antenna. Also, the format might be a unidirectional message which doesn’t require your phone to link onto the network. Additionally they could send it at only a few characters per second - far too low of rate for your phone to be usable even for two way data.