What are your opinions and experiences with the major phone service providers (US)? I've only ever been with Verizon, but finally considering other options like T-Mobile or Sprint. Do they all pretty much have good enough service at this point to where price is the real deciding factor?
Phone Service Providers
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Not really. I mean, they all generally have coverage but ATT and Verizon have the best networks all around. In some cities Sprint and T Mobile might be faster but are overall shit. There's a reason why Sprint and tmobile give out so much to keep their customers. Simple Mobile is a decent alternative if you have a phone that has a SIM, most phones do now anyway. It will basically run off any tower that has the strongest signal where you are. So you'll either be getting Sprint/Verizon or ATT/T Mobile signals. I'm not sure if they still offer unlimited but I used to pay 45/mo5 for unlimited call text and data.
tmobile has blown everyone out of the water for like a year now. Best 4g coverage and fastest speeds by far
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opensignal.com
plus their unlimited is capped at 50gbs instead of 22gb like verizon and att.
Tmobile is god tier now
Sprint wont exist in a couple months, being bought out my tmobile
Don't get sprint. It's fucking horrendous.
Without moving my phone, I'll get 2mbps down on a speedtest. I'll re-run and get 18mpbs. I'll rerun it four more times and get (and I'm not kidding) 0.1mbps.
It's so bad that data is unusable inside ANY building, and if I happen to be in a car or on a bus then I basically better fucking forget about loading any pages without refreshing 38 times.
I can't even phonepost when I'm out because it can never connect to captcha long enough to verify.
They're overpriced and garbage. The only real options are T-Mobile or Verizon.
Basically: YMMV
This is coming from someone who has moved like 20 times around the east coast. Some areas get amazing reception for some carriers but some don't.
My advice is to get an unlocked phone and switch between at&t and tmobile when necessary. Sprint seems to have the worst download/upload and verizon is the most jewish.
Son of a Verizon shill here. The coverage and customer service is top notch, but the price is outrageous. Only get it if you have a friend who's an employee and is willing to put you on their plan. They get a 50% discount on the monthly bill.
Rooting is a pain in the ass, but newer American unlocked phones have Verizon compatibility, so you're not locked into buying your devices from Verizon now.
>I can't even phonepost when I'm out because it can never connect to captcha long enough to verify.
based sprint
t-mobile is great but I live near a dead zone right at the edge of two cells and life is suffering
>The coverage and customer service is top notch, but the price is outrageous
Yep. Right now I'm paying roughly $55/mo for a measly 1 GB of data, which was actually their cheapest plan at the time I bought my iPhone. Ridiculous, yes, but I'm a very light user.
AT&T Prepaid is probably the best deal out of all of them desu. Good coverage and 6GB for 45 monthly isn't bad.
>tfw Sprint unlimited with no QOS/Throttling after 23GB
life is good
I've had 5gb/$30 on T-mobile for a while, and I feel like its not enough =/
How are you people getting such good deals? Family plans?
My dad kicked me off his plan when I turned 18 :-(
depends on where you live in the US and your options. I go with AT&T, they're a bit more expensive than T-Mobile but they got the best coverage here in south florida and the fastest LTE speeds.
Verizon prepaid is actually really good if you can afford to buy your phones outright or can finance a phone through some other means. I pay $40/mo for 3gb of data and unlimited talk/text, plus 0.75ยข for E911 bullshit but that's to do with the state of NH. Prepaid also now has data rollover and always on data, if I hit my limit it just throttles but is supposedly still usable for email and messaging although I've never used more than 2.5gb in month. Customer service is also the same, so far I've been helped at Verizon corporate stores just the same as postpaid users and I've been treated well when I call in too. The only real difference I've found is being deprioritized behind postpaid users on congested towers but I've only had this happen once in Manchester when there was a campaign rally but everyone was suffering congestion. I switched my phone to 3G/CDMA and was just fine since nobody uses 3G for internet anymore.
Ting.com
You're welcome.
Ting.com/r/rogan
Ting.
t. mobile
buy the phone upfront
buy a prepaid plan SIM, like a 5gb for 40 deal
Dead as soon as fiber internet and large wifi-zones begin to dominate. Cable is already pushing their shit everywhere to stay relevant. Only a matter of time.
I use T-Mobile and it's just as shitty as or actually a little better than Verizon when it works, but there are deadzones in certain places that Verizon never had. Except I haven't had it be the case that it mattered. All the US highways are lit.
>narrow bands with no sensible design for dividing the carrier among the subscribers
>full of collisions, like ethernet for the air
>actual ethernet on top of that
No, it won't. Wifi is 100% dogshit, the wifi alliance is composed entirely of neckbeards with nothing better to do, and it will never serve as a cell network no matter how many honeypots Comshit and NSAT&T put up.