Originally Posted by CrazyOne
That's very good to know, thanks. Useful for, say, a trip into the most rural areas. With most of my travel I'm fine with T-Mobile, but I could see wanting analog when spending time in parts of the western US for instance.
Yep. Even in the rural desert West you're fine with T-Mobile on the Interstates, but go on secondary roads and it's analog only in many places.
In January, my girlfriend and I drove from Vegas to Tahoe and back, up US 95, and although we didn't have any problems, it was nice to have the peace of mind of an analog cell phone that worked the whole way, especially considering that traffic was sparse and the nearest town could be as much as 40 miles away. On this route, T-Mobile faded out on the northwest outskirts of Las Vegas and didn't come back in until we reached Fallon, almost 400 miles away.
Analog is also a big help near where I live in central Virginia, where there's no GSM service except in the cities and along the Interstates and US 29.