Which Prepaid Wireless Service???

Check out the electronics board

 

Scroll down to the Electronics forum. There is a sub forum called Cellular.

Lots of good info.

 

I think you should go to the electronics thread! But if you don't get Verizon! Their coverage is best for us. Thanks.

 

I use Verizon and the coverage is excellent.

ive had a few students and trainees that have had Tmobile and they quickly discover its not the plan they'd like to have out here after a few days. It's simply the coverage is lacking.

 

Verizon hands down, anyone who says different really doesn't know what they are talking about.

 

Unless they have used Verizon somewhere other than a large metro area in which case it SUCKS lol. I use ATT and have pretty good coverage everywhere including rural areas. I used to have Tmobile and it wasnt to terrible but my experience with Verizon and Sprint was almost identical,get off the big road and you lose service.

 

I have a Verizon phone. When I used to train at Prime, I had trainees that had phones from every other major carrier. There was NEVER a situation where they would have service and I wouldn't, but there were many times where I would have service and they wouldn't. As an OTR driver, the only cell phone service I would use is Verizon Postpaid, and the reason I say postpaid is because with a prepaid plan, most carriers will only allow your phone to use their native network. If you're in a place where a postpaid phone would roam onto a regional network not owned by your company, a prepaid phone would have no service. For example, if you're looking at AT&T's coverage map for postpaid the coverage looks pretty good, when you switch to the prepaid map, almost the entire state of Nebraska is missing coverage, parts of I-40 in NM have no coverage, and parts of I-80 in Nevada have no coverage.

 

I have two Tracfones, since 1999. I have one that's Verizon and one that's AT&T. I keep them topped off with 1000 minutes at any given time. I only talk and text a little so I don't need a smartphone. I'm on the east coast so they both work great.

And for the past 9 months I have Internet with Truconnect Mobile Prepaid which is Sprint. I use with my Android tablet. It's $4.99/mo and 3.9cents per MB. I use it for news and weather and google maps streetview and TTR sometimes, no movies or games because streaming data would not be affordable.

 

Your experience with Verizon may have more to do with where you live than anything. In 2006 when I started with Prime, Springfield, and most of MO, did not have any native Verizon coverage. In these areas, the Verizon service was more than likely roaming off of Sprint towers. A few years ago, Verizon expanded into MO, and the coverage became as good as anywhere else Verizon had native service. In my 5.5 years as a 48 state driver at Prime, running team and solo, the only area where I ever had the dreaded "no service" on my phone for more than a few minutes, was on US-95 going from Winnemucca, NV to Ontario, OR. I was without service for at least an hour in southeast Oregon on that route. Other than that, even in the middle of nowhere on US highways out west, I still had service enough to make phone calls.