This must vary from place to place.  I live in a very sparsely populated area in SE Arizona.
The town I am near is 2500 people, and it is a 45 minute drive to a town with about 10,000
people (and a Walmart!!).  On that drive you don't pass any buildings.  My work takes me all
over Cochise County, since I work with many ranchers, and I get into some very remote areas.
In addition, the whole area is mountainous, with elevations ranging from 3500' to over 9000'.
I have used a cell phone for 8 years, and except for extremely rare cases when I manage to get
into the bottom of a deep canyon, I never have a problem.  I find my phone to be very reliable.

Bill

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Brodbeck" <gull@CYBERSPACE.ORG>
> > At 02:37 AM 1/17/2003, zampano wrote:
> > >  How come cell phones still are horribly
> > >unreliable all over the U.S?? When I could use them in Italy,
> > >Switzerland and Germany 8 years ago on mountain peaks, valleys, subway
> > >stations, anywhere except tunnels???
> >
> > Have you compared the sizes?  Germany for example, has a helicopter/trauma
> > center setup that can get people to a trauma center from anywhere in the
> > country in fifteen minutes.  This is great, but they have only about
> > one-eighth the land mass per inhabitant (230/km^2 vs 27/km^2 ten or fifteen
> > years ago)
>
> That's part of it, but another major difference is that Europe
> standardized on one digital cell phone standard.  In the U.S., there
> wasn't the political will to do this, so we have three completely
> incompatible phone networks.  For everyone to get reliable service the
> whole country has to be covered in triplicate!  This is one case where a
> little more government intervention would have benefited everyone.