Never have more than two bars reception.
During Hurricane Sandy, cell towers went down in the first two hours and stayed down 4-5 days. We had no power for 4 days. Our land line worked the entire time. I'll never voluntarily give up my land line.

I have a tracfone. I only lose service if I'm out of range or if the lines are really busy, then I may need to wait a minute or two for a line to open up.

no.

There's an AT&T tower less than a mile from me.

Massive power outages can sometimes effect cell phone service. The sites may have battery or generator backups, but those systems have their limits.

In case of power outages, a battery operated charger is right handy.

Iowa - day after the 18 inch snowfall