During that big midwest blackout Verizon cells stayed up, they had at least a couple days of power and generator trucks that drove around topping off the battery banks.

My local phone started out at ameritech then became SBC and then AT&T and we never had decent service through all three companies. Was paying $40 / month for just a simple land line and never knew if it was actually going to work when we went to use it. There were times when I would use the internet to report my phone or power was out.