[Travis McGee]

They have full cell coverage in Mogadishu in the middle of battles. And they have full coverage across Afghanistan.

The govt can shut down some exchanges, but it will be spotty at best.

[Lazamataz]

They have full cell coverage in Mogadishu in the middle of battles. And they have full coverage across Afghanistan.

There's a big difference between conflict and the occasional service outage due to a cell tower being collateralled, and the government coming in and shutting down the operation of the business. There are (or at least were) microwave dishes to the switches that chokepoint a lot of cell service. In case you don't believe it can be done, if the government has the desire: Taliban shut down cell phone service from dusk to dawn.

[Lazamataz]

Here's the disconnect I think you are having, my friend: Cell service is non-distributed. It is equivalent to the old model of the mainframe. (Well, more like a whole series of mainframes).

The internet is different. It is a distributed, many-path method of communication. Packets persist from server to server, jumping around until A successful path is found. In cell phones, it's more like ONE path. Well, a bunch of towers, but you chokepoint at some point. Not the same in the internet. It's built on a no-chokepoint model, on purpose, to survive nuke bangy things. :)

[PA Engineer]

They have full cell coverage in Mogadishu in the middle of battles. And they have full coverage across Afghanistan.

The govt can shut down some exchanges, but it will be spotty at best.

I'm going to have to agree with Lazamataz on this one, but for different reasons. Electricity, natural gas and other utilities feed urban areas from a significant distance. Most power plants are in rural areas.

Right Of Way (ROW) vulnerabilities cut both ways. A couple of towers down and a city is brought to it's knees. In a couple of days the batteries will die for distributed communications. Water service will also come to a halt.

Just something to think about and add to the gaming. What if the outlying areas are controlled and the power is shut off to the city? What if urban MUYs have to then run the gauntlet? 72 hours is all they would have.