Ask Slashdot: Who Has the Best 3G Coverage In California and Nevada?

New submitter derchris writes "We will be on vacation in the U.S. next month for about 3 weeks. We are going to do a road trip between San Francisco, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. To not use roaming for data, and get a heart attack once back home looking at the mobile bill, I was looking at so called 'MiFi' devices, portable 3G Wi-Fi hotspots. As far as I know, more or less all of the U.S. carriers have such devices available. But as I'm not from the U.S., I have no idea what would give me the best 3G coverage in the areas we are travelling. Another question would be whether I can buy one of these devices off eBay, and use it with any SIM card. Let's hope there are users available who could give some advice on this topic."

Comments

I'll probably be in the minority here...

[erotic_pie]

I'll probably be in the minority here, but I would say go with Sprint. Sure their data speeds aren't the fastest, but they are a good bit cheaper than Verizon, and their speeds are still plenty useable for web browsing, Pandora, and Netflix. Plus you get the added bonus of free roaming on Verizon's network if you're outside of Sprint's coverage areas. Pretty much anything is better than AT&T.

Prepay

[vlm]

Attention visitors.... Note that 99% of the advertising and marketing budget in the USA is oriented around "free device with minimum two year service contract" business model. Most of the civilian population does not know any other cellphone business model exists... Unless you're planning on your trip taking 2 years, you're best off with a prepay provider.

There are providers that are non-contract aka month-to-month who will helpfully automatically bill your CC every month until you find a way to stop them. I don't think you want the headache of making them "go away" after you return home. The prepay has a much lower risk, once the balance is depleted, they can't go after you if they have no idea who you are and/or no idea how to bill you.

Assume you're dealing with crooks and dishonest wheeler dealers. In the telco biz, often you are.

Also be careful with the power cords in the US. If you try hard enough you can probably curl your fingers underneath a charger and touch energized AC wall outlet contacts. Also our power plugs are not as heavy as the giant hockey puck UK ones (possibly AC power connectors are the only thing you'll find lighter weight in the states) but that doesn't mean you can swing them around in the air like a flail spiked ball and chain without hurting yourself. And for a good laugh ask to see your hosts "hot water heater tank" I am told we're the only country in the world that doesn't use tankless, its a trip, they're these giant closet sized steel tubes.

Re:Prepay

[vlm]

Those tankless heaters are a poor ROI for people in the US.

Disagree strongly.
1) Last time I was in the market, you could not buy a tankless with a guarantee less than 15 years, and you could not buy a tank with a guarantee over 7 years. You cannot compare the capital cost of one tank vs one tankless because you need to buy two tanks to get the lifetime of one tankless. Also water damage from the inevitable leakage means you'll pay twice as much for tank water damage (on my concrete floor, thats $0, but some people destroy hundreds of dollars of Pergo everytime they have a flood...)
2) Price delta at the time of install for me 7 or so years ago was remarkably only about $300. Instantly my summertime natgas consumption dropped $20. To a crude first approximation the payback time was 15 months.
3) Natgas price only goes up. Median income only goes down, making it even more sensitive. It seems utterly inevitable that I'll end up even further ahead than I already am.

Poor ROI or not, I don't care. Its a cheap luxury item not a for-profit investment. My hot shower water never, ever, runs cold. I simply have a slightly better home life than if I had a tank. Its rather like asking for the ROI on a new ipod, or the ROI on buying a new frying pan. Its nice that I save money, but if I didn't I'd still buy it anyway because its an easily affordable luxury for me.

Reasonable Question

[erick99]

Come on, folks. It's a reasonable question. He is going to two large states and is asking about coverage. There is no need to ridicule him for his request. If you can't answer it or are not interested than move on. I doubt SlashDot would have posted it had they thought it wasn't a reasonable request.