Tapping this in from a handheld so I'll be briefer than I'd like:
Personally I believe they intend to use them for BOTH communication and remotely detonated bombs.
They don't even need to activate the phones(making them even more anonymous) if they have someone who knows how to "clone" cell phones. (A one minute operation if you know how. ).
They don't need autodialers or anything ponderous to call a bunch of different numbers ... they can do it by callling the one number assigned to the clones.
You would quickly get caught if you used a cloned phone for day to day communication, but for a one time use thing, no worries as long as you don't have more than one cloned number operating in each cell zone.
I wouldn't be a bit surprised if there were thousands of small explosions all over the US and the rest of the world on Aug. 22 or 9-11 etc.