I was out in Marin Headlands, across the bay from San Francisco this
past weekend. We stayed with my son's scout troop out at the hostel
("http://i31.tinypic.com/i3rihj.jpg"). I used to always get good AMPS
coverage out at the hostel, but there was always very poor CDMA
coverage, and no GSM coverage. The hostel is in a valley with no towers,
though if you climb a hill behind it you can see San Francisco.

AMPS is gone, but no digital coverage was added to replace it (what
about the FCC mandate that the carriers could turn off AMPS if no loss
of coverage would result?). I could get one bar of digital outside the
hostel, but some other Verizon users with handsets with poorer radios
got no signal at all. AT&T users had no signal at all, but they never
had coverage before (except in the olden days of TDMA/AMPS).

I didn't care that much, but two different parents had restaurants that
they own in the south bay (both pearl tea places) and had to resort
(OMG) to using the single pay phone to contact their managers.

What was strange is that both my wife's and my handsets (V325i) were
fully charged, and completely discharged over the course of a few hours,
even with no coverage. They must have been continually searching for an
AMPS signal.

Anyway, that's my rant. The carriers turned off AMPS, and in a lot of
areas nothing replaced it at all. It wasn't supposed to work this way.
But for AT&T it worked out well, since now they have almost the same
coverage as Verizon in a lot of places, which is none.