I've noticed that US utilities generally have a "dependency hierarchy": the telephone company is allowed to rely on the electrical utility, but not vice-versa.

I've noticed that US utilities generally have a "dependency hierarchy": the telephone company is allowed to rely on the electrical utility, but not vice-versa. Water+sewer are another step up (and often have large, expensive diesel generators). I think most electrical utilities in the US would balk at being dependent on a cellular telephone company. Many of them won't even lease fiber from the telcos, insisting on stringing up their own instead.