1. I was interested to know how the cell phone coverage has changed in
rural areas especially in the western US after the analog systems lost
support in February 2008.

My service is Verizon and they dropped the ability of my phone to
connect to the older analog network. It seems like this means it will
be harder to get a signal in rural areas incase of a landout.

I was considering buying a second phone that worked on a different
network in hopes that if my verizon phone did not connect the
nonverizon phone might connect on the AT&T GSM network.

I think one of the pay as you go no-contract phones would be ideal
such as:

http://www.tracfone.com/jsplib/verify_mapcov.jsp
http://att.com/gophone

2. Any ideas on these pay as you go no-contract phones regarding how
good they are for retrieves?

Chris