The Fire Service in Christchurch wants to improve emergency communications after learning lessons from the February earthquake.
Area Commander Dan Coward says the reliability of modern forms of communication falters when cell phone towers go down and power supplies fail.
In contrast, he says radio communications generally worked really well after the quake.
Mr Howard says looking into options is important as cell phones are becoming increasingly central to people's lives and it's important to look at how the resilience of modern telecommunications can be improved.
