It was back in 2003 when I was a tech school student at Keesler AFB in Biloxi, MS. In fact, my phone number still has the same 208 area code.
Yesterday, I was out shooting .22s with my good friend Wally when I decided to give The Innocent Schoolgirl a call. Apparently, she was trying to call me; but she kept getting a message saying that the area was out of service due to the hurricane. Which is kind of odd, considering that I called her just fine. And now I notice that my voicemail is just giving me a busy signal.
Basically, your incoming calls have to go through a central switching office in your home area - which, for your phone number, is in Biloxi. When your phone is on, the local cell station sends a message to your home office telling it where you are. If that switching office is not available, then your incoming calls don’t go through.
Your outgoing calls, on the other hand, just go through the closest switching office, since the concern is not where the call is coming from, but where it’s going - the switching office in Mississippi doesn’t need to get involved.
I moved up here a few months ago and hadn’t bothered to move my service up here or anything; I had to go get a local phone number a couple of days ago because I couldn’t call in or out. Silly me, what with a New Orleans number and I thought I’d still have service?
You’re probably going to have to do the same thing. I didn’t have to get a new phone or anything, but a new number and I think they had to tweak my plan a bit.