T-mobile

well i live in LA and i couldn't use my phone outside my house but if i drove a block to the mall the thing worked fine and going around cornersthe #### thing was searching for service or roaming on AT&T'S network LMAO. your two best bets would be verizon or AT&T.

 

My experience with T-Mobile is that it generally works fine in and around cities but out in the open country the coverage is lacking. As the other poster said, AT&T and Verizon have the best national coverage.

 

We keep an informal chart of both voice calls and aircard internet connections from hundreds of drivers per week. It has been an ongoing thing for many years here and it has NO phone number or personal info. It is merely to keep an eye on the cellular industry as relating to truck drivers for the purpose of answering this exact question. The 4 carriers that we primarily care about are ATT, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon.

There are two categories:

Major cities (dedicated route and city delivery drivers) - they are all solid in your major urban areas. It's pretty much a wash there. Go with a 4G phone and whichever price plan works best for you.

Open road / cross-country / OTR driving - Here they diverge a bit. Also, 4G is often a few dollars more on your plan and for the phone. Since 4G is not widely promulgated outside of the urban areas yet, you can still save a few bucks by staying with a 3G phone and plan and still have decent internet speeds in all urban areas and many open-road areas as well.

Based on dropped calls verses non-dropped, verses internet connections, here is our opinion at this writing:

1. Verizon
2. Sprint
3. ATT
4. T-Mobile

Remember that these companies are often buying up each other's towers, leasing them, and actually buying each other entirely so this rating can change.