T-mobile nowadays (mid 2026)

Not OTR but I've been very happy with T-Mobile in my travels around tge country. City or country coverage is very good.

 

I have both tmobile and verizon. Me personally i think tmobile has better quality and faster speeds but less overall coverage. Ive been to a couple jobsites this year where i have no tmobile coverage but verizon still has service... This is all western us though, every carrier has deadspots out here.. I think its like 80 bucks a month now for one line unlimited everything. 50gb of data and u get throttled after that

 

I had them for years but after the Sprint customers got merged in, I hit a fair number of areas, even near the interstate, where my tablet would sit and spin while streaming (and it had better reception than my phone). I finally ditched them when they discontinued the plan I was on where I had 40g of hotspot data on both my phone and tablet and to upgrade to a new plan with that much hotspot data it was gonna cost me $100 more. The new plan I was forced into had unlimited on-device data, but the hotspot for my phone was dropped to 15g and 0 hotspot data on my tablet. Plus, it was supposed to be unthrottled on device data, but when I hit the mid 40g on my tablet, I would get an email saying I was approaching 50g at which point if the network 'could' be throttled. I told them to pound sand, shut down both lines and went to Visable with unlimited everything for half of what I was paying at T-Mo and have had 0 slowdowns and 0 emails warning me about using excessive data.

I see now that T-mo is partnering with Starlink on some of their new phones. No telling how much satellite usage they'll allow, especially when more customers upgrade to satellite capable phones.

 

The only time I had issues with tmobile were in very obscure middle of no where villages

example is chobani out in new Berlin new York.

Or places that are dead zones for all carriers.


example is that Tomah WI walmart DC. I feel like no one gets any good service out of there.

Other than that, I always had good service, even in the colorado, Wyoming, Utah mountains.

 

If you end up going T-mobile network. Consider using Mint Mobile. They use the T-Mobile network but offer discounted rates. Mint was recently purchased by T-mobile, but I have not noticed any changes from my side.

Mint can do the cheaper rates because they bill quarterly or annually, which saves them the monthly cost of processing the payment, and they reduce the payment accordingly.

Of course that means you have to be a responsible adult and not have an always empty bank account.

https://www.mintmobile.com/plans/

 

They are probably using a satellite phone.

 

I have Mint Mobile also. I don’t run out west. They have good coverage since it T-Mobile just cheaper $30 a month for unlimited data if you willing to buy a year in advance. I haven’t noticed any slowdown going above 50GB in a month. They limit YouTube videos to 480p I believe it look fine on cellphone screen. You get 20GB of hotspot included. I believe you can call Mexico and Canada.

Verizon has Visible it’s cheaper and prepaid

If you phone has eSIM all you need is wi-fi signal and it pretty easy to switch carriers vs getting SIM card sent in mail

 

Been with AT&T for about 24 years and I’m done with it.. Even got a business plan but everywhere I go now the service is lousy.

Seems like they gave up investing in their infrastructure.