Best cell phone carriers

Well I didn't say I had a problem with it.

I tried Cheap (Sprint) and I lasted like a week
Went back to Verizon.

 

Depends on what your after ?

I've had 3 smart phones taken, had a really hard time locating a pay phone in the time of need. Out of necessity I picked up a phone from TA using net10 .- I've upgraded the phone but net10 does the job.. don't have to pay for all landline calls made and I do that frequently. I've had Verizon and Sprint... ATT in the past

 

When I was otr I had Verizon and it was hands down the best service bar none. I had 4g data everywhere and 3g in spots where my att phone would have zero service (i40 new Mexico from abq to Texas I'm looking at you!).

You can't go wrong with Verizon in my opinion. Kind of expensive though. But if you want solid Internet on the road it's the best way to go.

unloader

 

I used to work for a regional carrier. Here's some info.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_wireless_communications_service_providers

Sort the list by voice technology. Alright. Look at where you currently travel the most. Most (if not all) regional carriers have agreements with the big national carriers. May take some digging around and maybe asking on local sites (or even directly calling those carriers) to see who their national roaming partner is. Most of the GSM carriers seem to (in my limited experience, I worked for a CDMA carrier) seem to have roaming agreements for voice with each other, and maybe T-Mobile. So, with reciprocity, the big carrier would roam on them just fine. The regional carrier is going to bill at .0006 cents or whatever per minute, multiply by however many billable minutes take place on their towers (it could be just a simply properly placed tower in a dead zone between two of the bigs) and if 1 second of voice happens, it's billable, and they will receive checks every month just because of the traffic of the national carrier having so many more subscribers using their stuff.

With the CDMA Carriers, with Verizon being the largest and simply wanting to ensure their customers could roam wherever, they tended to ink out agreements with the regional carriers for reciprocity.

TL;DR: Find where you tend to be the most, find out who their national partner is, buy either that regional service if it's local to you, or the national carrier. The regional carriers seem to be either light years behind in terms of plan competitiveness or generally ahead of the curve as they aren't publicly traded companies for the most part.

 

Verizon is the best, AT&T second. T-Mobile and Sprint mostly working in the city. Don't forget about the phone. With the same carrier in the same place you can or can not have the signal depends on what the phone in use. By my experience HTC and Samsung were working where is Motorola fail.

 

I have U.S.Cellular. Have had both smart phone and dumb phone, and have only experienced a couple spots nation wide that it didn't work....and found out that NOBODY gets service in those spots regardless of provider.

Everyone always talks about the "big 4"....well....I am happy with number 5, because talking to others, sounds like I get just as good as them, only cheaper.

 

I started OTR last year and had T-mobile for voice and I had a T-mobile hotspot for data. It sucked. Broad swaths of the country had no data, lots of areas with really slow data, and much of the country had absolutely no voice at all.

I finally caved after needing to make a phone call to find a customer and had no voice. Ended up wasting an hour getting to somewhere I could make the call.

Switched to Verizon and it is rare to be out of voice and seldom without data. Yes, it is more expensive. You get what you pay for and I consider my phone and data to be essential tools of the trade.

 

Verizon has the best coverage. I have tried Sprint and T Mobile... they dont have near the coverage as Verizon. I have been with Verizon since 2006...

 

Verizon......

 

I had T-Mobile for 10 years, before I got back in the rocking chair. T-Mobile is great for phone service, but once I started travelling, their data network turned out to be pathetic. Those cute coverage maps they show you? Ink on paper, a fantasy. Switched to Verizon in January, and haven't had some data service, maybe twice. Of course, just when I needed it, but that's why I have an RM Atlas and a phone. Verizon costs more, about 25% more, but I got 2 Samsung S4 phones free when I signed up, a saving of $1,000 and $1,599, depending. I liked that. I added a line last month when my wife's best friends daughter moved in with us (going to college, didn't want to move to NY with Mom) and Verizon sold me a Ellipsis 7 tablet, $499 value, for $.99 and $10/month. I was going to buy the Verizon hardware device to power my PC off their 4Glte signal, $30/month, but the tablet does a great job for only the $10. So, I like Verizon, have some facts that they are better, and like the drivers say, especially strong for data. To me it's worth it, because now I can do banking and other sensitive online work from my Freightliner on a secure network. I no longer have to stop at a PFJ or TAP and use up my hours on a public, unsecured network.