Cell phones were spotty at best after katrina. The phone companies brought in COWS as soon as they could. COWS — Cell On Wheels. Portable cell towers.
Voice was rather spotty after katrina, but for the most part texting worked well.
Maybe. I still seem to remember that the landlines were toast due to so many downed wires. I do know that around here in the ice storm of 2011, there were no cell phone outages (except as the batteries ran down) but a number of lineline outages due to tress knocking down wires. My biggest issue with cell vs landline is that cell phone voice quality seem to be less consistent than land line voice quality. For one thing it is dependent on the handset you have, and some of the cheaper ones just plain suck. For another it depends on the network traffic in your location and at the time you're making tha call. It appears that heavy traffic usage can degrade the signal. Another point I have against cell phones is the constant rapid obsolesence of the handsets.