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Ask Slashdot: Best Cell Phone Carrier In the US?
martypantsROK writes "After nearly seven years of living abroad, I'm planning to return to the U.S. in early 2013. Last time I lived there, smart phones weren't out yet. Dropped calls were common, and poor reception (can you hear me now?) was an ad campaign. I'm used to South Korea's wicked speeds, both for internet and wireless networks, and I'm wondering what the Slashdot community believes to be best carrier in the U.S. Which is fastest? Which offers the best deal for lots of data? Nationwide roaming and coverage? Prices? Service?"
That's like asking what the best fast food restaurant is.
Depends on your location. Verizon has been the strongest as far as signal and speed form my experience.
TIng is a new provider running on Sprint's network. They have a really interesting a-la-carte plan, reasonable rates. No iPhone. Anyone tried it yet? Considering a switch from Verizon, which is just Far Too Expensive and Corporate for my taste.
www.opensignalmaps.com - Great for telling you coverage of the various phone providers. If you're going for sprint, try www.ting.com (I don't work for them) - but that said, they seem to be the most sane in terms of billing.
Just accept that and find the plan that best suits your needs.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
The best customer service you'll get is T-Mobile. Not the best coverage if you are outside of a metro area but they have fantastic UMA (WiFi calling) support. Their plans are as good or better than others.
Just getting reasonable people on the phone for support is what has kept me happy for 7 years.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
I have the same experience. Switched from AT&T to Verizon, and I get a lot more dropped calls with Verizon. The myth that Verizon is better is just that.
They are all terrible in one way or another. In the end it's going to be who sucks the least.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
I never understand this. Because whenever I compare plans between Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint. They're usually within $10.
Right now I'm looking at $160 for Verizon, or $150 for AT&T/Sprint.
I would have to agree. It also doesn't hurt that you can tether on their network for free, and there's really not a whole hell of a lot they can do about it.
"Get used to disappointment."
If you do not specify your requirements, you cannot expect to get answers with appropriate solutions.
After nearly seven years of living anal free, I'm planning to be anally raped in early 2013. Last time I was anally raped, giant spiked dildoes weren't out yet. Small penises were common, and good lube was an ad campaign. I'm used to South Korea's very small penises, both with lube and without, and I'm wondering what the Slashdot community believes to be the least worst anal raper in the U.S. Which is quickest? Which offers the least pain and lots of lube? Nationwide reaming and coverage (condom)? Sizes? Service?
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
...the harder part is finding out which one sucks just a little less at any particular point.
if you're a heavy user tracfone is magnitudes more expensive then pretty much any plan with any company.
nobody's perfect
I'm that one guy who manages to get pretty good reception through AT&T where I live. I regularly make 2+ hour phone calls that do not get dropped. I don't have missed calls or SMS's that never arrive. On that note, I'm actually fairly happy with them. But in terms of service... UGH.
Twice this year I've had issues that required that I have a chat with them. Both were issues that could easily have been resolved via e-mail, and both ended up with a lengthy email exchange AND time on the phone. I don't meant that these were complex issues that required escalation or anything like that, I mean I had to send emails to the tune of: "Could you please READ WHAT I WROTE?" They have dumbasses answering questions and, frankly, their policies aren't designed to avoid issues. Really, they want you to go into overages. I suspect their service is so bad so that the next time you call to challenge an overage, you sit there and have a conversation with yourself about whether or not it's even worth the time. Of course, I really cannot prove that.
I've had a terrible time with AT&T this year, I just wanted to give you a heads up on that. (... and I just wanted to rant because I'm still pissed off at them.)
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
That's the point though. Coverage varies greatly depending on location. Verizon and AT&T seem to work most anywhere but from my experience I've never been anywhere Verizon worked and AT&T didn't although I have seen places AT&T worked and Verizon didn't. Not very many though but my house is one of them.
Well consider yourself lucky then. I told the company 50% of my calls drop making it next to impossible to talk to anyone, and they didn't offer me ANYTHING. They just offered to upgrade my plan for more minutes greedily. You'd think the company would have let me exit the contract since their service was grossly faulty. It didn't matter where I was or how many bars I had, I'd drop calls all day long. So I had bad experience with their cell phone coverage, and bad experience with their customer support.
God spoke to me
Verizon has ubiquitous buildouts of outdated wireless infrastructure. They can service a text message or a voice call almost anywhere in the US. They also charge 70+ a month for basic service, and have technological limitations on surfing while talking. I hear their customer service is legendary in the "eldritch horror" category.
ATT has the best GSM tech buildout in the US, but is SERIOUSLY oversold. They engage in abusive market tactics, pathologically insist the problem isn't from overselling, and have customer service horrible enough that even verizon could appear desirable. Theoretically can surf and talk simultaneously, but charge extra for the priviledge of tethering, drop calls horribly, and have spotty data coverage.
Sprint-Nextel has a fairly stable network of comparatively subpar network technologies servicing cheaper prepaid type devices and feature phones. Cheap and ubiquitous, but data is a farce, IIRC.
T-Mo has very limited buildout, is not loved by the parent company (deutch telecom), and struggles in the telecom marketplace. Despite this, has fairly nice customer service, offers incentives for patronage of their users, and are trying to improve coverage maps and network tech. Currently involved in a fairly ambitious LTE 4G buildout. Reasonably inexpensive; no contract unlimited talk, text, and 2gb 4G data for 60/mo. (Not the fastest though. 5300kbps down, 1200kbps up last I measured in my area.) Spotty coverage. Claim to fame is wifi calling and free teathering.
To me, the ideal carrier could only be born from strongly enforced neutrality laws allowing cheap sublicense of spectrum and infrastructure, with a dual technology, quad-band handset, able to leverage verizon's CDMA network as a fallback, and full GSM operation on both ATT and T-Mo spectrum. Such a company could never exist in the USA under prevailing conditions, which do not foster true innovative service offerings, but rather collusion based pricing hegemonies.
That's about the schtick of it as far as I know.
I actually like T-Mo, despite the weak coverage areas. I recently got a nice promotional offer from them recently for being a long term customer. (They offered the next tier service at my current tier price for 12 months, which greatly increased my dl cap at 4G speed.)
As far as I know, ATT and verizon bend over backwards to make you lose old plans they think aren't profitable, and force you to spend money. (I can revert to my previous level of service very painlessly with T-Mo after the promotion ends.)
If you are spoiled by south korean telecom, you be mortified by the horrible state of american telecom.
Coverage quality depends on location, and therefore how much you travel. You do know that Tracfone doesn't have their own network, and uses the Verizon network for some of their phones/locations, right? Tracfone seems to favor T-Mobile and Sprint, neither of which have very good coverage outside of metro areas.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
The mobile phone system is terrible in the States. It's expensive, you get charged for receiving and sending calls, 3G is bad, and 4G is spotty at best.
I get better mobile service out here were I live in Vientiene, Laos and Phnom Penh Cambodia! My parents in boston complain about how expensive it is to call me, but it's as cheap for me to call the States as it is to make a local call.
That said, when I do have to go to the States I use a T-mobile prepaid and maintain a Google-Voice number in between.
I suggest you rethink moving back to the States.
Mobile phones will be the least of your disappointments.
Can't vouch for quality since I haven't tried many providers... but it is super affordable. Their usage is tiered, but they'll automatically move you without any penalty to whatever tier you use for that month, even if you use a lower tier. Yes, that means if you're on a 500 MB plan and you use less than than 100 MB, they'll charge you for the 100 MB for that month. How crazy is that?
My cell phone bill went down $15 switching from a voice + text w/ AT&T to voice + text + data with Ting. Only downside is that the phones aren't subsided, so I paid $200 for mine. But obviously the prices are still going to work in my favor in the long run, especially since I'm not a phone hopper and can easily see myself keeping this one for 3-4 years.
https://ting.com/
Competition is very tight between the main companies (sprint, t-mobile, AT&T) which means prices are comparable. It comes down to which has the features you want, with the most reliability and lowest price.
If you don't know, the United States does cell phone service differently than many other places. Here, you generally have your phone subsidized by buying a contract and that phone is then locked to the carrier, whereas (if I understand it correctly) in Europe you go buy a phone at full price then choose whatever carrier you want and pay monthly.
Check the coverage maps, then get an MVNO that operates off the towers of whoever has the best coverage. Straight Talk offers phones on all 4 major networks, for significantly lower monthly costs and no contracts. Boost and Cricket have pretty good prices too. In my area, the only national carrier with decent coverage is Verizon, but I'm sure that changes for the Eastern Seaboard.
I live 10 miles outside a city of 150,000 people and I drop calls on TMobile on a regular basis. Their map claims I should get two bars at home, some times I get none at all. In fact, their map of this area is one huge lie as I can tell you exactly where there are huge dead zones that they claim to be 1-2 bar zones, and I have confirmed this with several different phones on their network.
The situation has been this way for 7+ years now. Now as an added bonus sometimes when I am at home, if the call isn't dropped I get a delayed echo of my own voice in my ear. Not easy to deal with, when I am expecting to hear the other person and I'm hearing myself as well. I've also had several times where I can hear the other person, but suddenly and without warning they can no longer hear me.
Numerous times I have reported this to TMobile and never have they fixed it.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Sprint actually has an OK signal here, but I could never get their fucking self-service web page to let me log in. There are a couple of places in town where you get no signal with Sprint. This includes pretty much everywhere I work. Also no 4g coverage in my town from Sprint.
Never tried Verizon, I've heard too many things about them from their customers and ex-customers.
T-Mobile does have some gaps in coverage, but they actually do have 4G here. And I can actually use their web site for paying bills, managing auto-pay and stuff like that. AND, I can get coverage with them with their Android smart phone anywhere that I can log into wifi, and that includes pretty much everywhere there's a gap in their coverage in town. It seems like it automagically switches over to VOIP whenever it gets an internet connection, and that's pretty hot, if you ask me. Their customer service is also the least likely to make me want to spork my own eyeballs out rather than talk to them. I seem to recall that last time was almost a... pleasant... experience. If you can believe that.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
This has more to do with GSM vs CDMA. There was an article on Slashdot recently about how CDMA has "won" the protocol war because it can handle more simultaneous connections. What wasn't mentioned is that the main difference is that GSM tries to keep all current connections regardless of signal strength, while CDMA drops the poor signal calls if the tower is near capacity and a handset with a strong signal call is attempting place a call. As a consumer, I went for GSM. In the U.S., this means AT&T or T-Mobile, or a MVNO like Trak Phone or SIMple Mobile. I also like the GSM device selection better.
LTE may be changing this, though.
It is interesting to see which countries went with CDMA over GSM. As far as I know, only the U.S., China and Mexico use CDMA.
Seriously, you spend $150+ a month for a cell phone or is that for your entire family?
One other thing to consider is customer service. I switched to Sprint from Verizon and love it. No dropped calls for me and customer service is top notch. Got their home phone service for $20 bucks a month to keep from going over minites cause alot of my family still have landlines. Mobile to mobile is free night and weekends. (7PM) are free. I truely have unlimited data even if I am roaming. So I highly recommend Sprint.
Chris Sheppard
They are exact opposites among 4 major carriers, each is best on its own accord:
Verizon - best coverage, fastest internet, but uses CDMA so cannot use phone abroad, they charge arm and leg for everything, including $30/mo for SMS (tmobile offers it for free), they will happily cripple your phone for no reason, and generally many people try to stay away from it.
T-Mobile - best prices on contract, GSM network, allows to bring your own phone and gives a monthly discount if you do. Was the first carrier to offer Android. Good coverage in populated areas, adequate coverage elsewhere. They do allow to unlock phone you bought with the plan but if you travel, then buy unlocked phone elsewhere then get their discounted contract.
I can't speak for the entire U.S. It seems that carriers focus on different regions of the country. I traveled quite a bit over the past 7 years and here is my experience.
I have the best coverage with Verizon. Speeds were consistent and good. In the New England area, I get 4 or 5 bars where ever I go.
In New England, AT&T just sucks. It sucks on speed and coverage. Drive two miles of the freeway in New Hampshire or Vermont, and signals are spotty. In the metro Boston area, I can't drive 5 miles on the freeway without dropping calls a few times. There was an AT&T billboard in Brighton (part of Boston) that said "More bar in more areas" I think they were describing the taverns and not their coverage.
Sprint was really good in New England. I had a plan that would allow me to roam on the Verizon network outside of Boston. I don't know if they still do that, but I always have coverage. In the 7 years of using a Sprint phone, I never experience a dropped call on my commute from the North West suburbs (Burlington) into Brookline (4 miles from Downtown).
I was getting free phones from Nokia and Microsoft and none of them got more than 2G data speeds on T-Mobile. I understand they offer 3G in the 800Mhz band. None of my phones could use the 3G. If you buy one of their special phones, it works. From what I understand they are rolling out HSPA on more frequencies and are also building out their 4G LTE network.
So what you're saying is Verizon's network is designed around dropping low priority calls. Do you think because I was on a low minutes plan that they rated me less of a customer and this is why I was dropped non stop?
God spoke to me
Buy an unlocked GSM phone, and activate it on T-mobile. Or, keep the one you have, if it can handle US frequencies.
Of the four national US carries (small regional carriers typically piggy-back on the big nationals), only AT&T and T-mobile are GSM. Verizon and Sprint use CDMA.
Over ten years ago I dropped AT&T after their network became too saturated, and became pretty much unusable. From what I hear, things haven't changed.
Verizon and AT&T have the largest network and best, fastest coverages; but if you're moving to a large, populated, city, T-mobile's coverage will probably be as best as the bigger guys. Out in less-populated areas, far away from the civilization, Verizon's going to be only game in town; sometimes it's AT&T.
Sprint falls somewhere in the middle between Verizon/AT&T, and T-mobile, who is the smallest, but I think they're the most friendly to people who prefer to use their own, unlocked phone, and have very low tolerance for US cell carrier B.S. They even used to have discounted plans for people who bring their own unlocked phones, but I don't think they do that anymore. They do have "pre-paid" plans, which seem to be a bit cheaper.
There's no such thing as an unlocked CDMA phone, so with Verizon or Sprint you have to buy one from them, when you buy service. Verizon is notorious for feature-castrating their phones. It's been my experience that "Bluetooth" on Verizon's castrated phones only means a wireless headphone. That's it. No bluetooth file transfer/browsing, no other Bluetooth profiles. If you want to load your own MP3 ringtone, you can only get them on the phone by buying them from Verizon. Sometimes, I heard a rumor that some Verizon phones let you configure an MP3 ringtone that you've transferred over USB, but, it's been my experience that the UI on Verizon's phones do not let you select an uploaded/copied ringtone.
I've been happy on T-mobile for the last ~10 years. They don't care what phone I use, I just pop in a SIM, and off I go. I finally decided to get a data plan as a back-up for my wired broadband, since I telecommute. Set it up, then twiddled a bit with my phone, and had it set up tethering without any issues. From what I heard, if you want to tether with the bigger carriers, you're likely end up getting charged extra, on top of paying for the data. Utter bullshit. From what I've heard, they've been getting bitch-slapped recently, on that account, because, supposedly they're not allowed to do that anymore, as a condition for buying some recently-auctioned wireless spectrum. Whatever, I don't care.
As far as prices go, the differences between the carriers are pretty much negligible. The only other thing is: T-mobile, themselves, does not sell Iphones; but if you get an unlocked GSM one, shouldn't be too difficult to activate it. Verizon and AT&T are the primary carriers of Iphone in the US. I think Sprint might be selling them too, though.
Each of the three major carriers are good is some ways and terrible in others. It all depends on what your priorities are.
Verizon has the best overall coverage US-wide. I've been to many areas that didn't have AT&T or T-Mobile coverage but have never found a place that didn't have Verizon coverage. That's about it.
AT&T has the fastest data speeds in most of the areas that it does cover (3G or LTE). Also, you can use data and voice at the same time on all of their smartphones right now. They are also less expensive than Verizon in most cases. Coverage is worse, though.
T-Mobile has ultra-low prices and the best customer service. Worst coverage and slow data speeds, though.
Oh, and there's Sprint. No idea if they will even be around this time next year.
I've been with all four. I'm with AT&T right now since I don't need Verizon's roaming coverage and would rather pay less and have faster speeds now.
As far as I know, ATT and verizon bend over backwards to make you lose old plans they think aren't profitable, and force you to spend money.
As far as I know about Verizon trying to make you spend money is only recent - I've been with them for ~10 years. If you are an old fart with Verizon like me, you have to give up your unlimited data UNLESS you buy your new phone outright at full price. Now I normally don't use a ton of data, but if they want to play games I can start tethering and guzzling bandwidth when I get my new phone.....
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
There's much discussion of coverage and speed. Where I live, near Chicago, Verizon can't be beat. But the bigger thing for me is that their Customer Service is very good. I could not believe when I got my iPhone 5 a couple of days ago and had trouble activating it, I called Verizon and was speaking with a good english speaker in less than a minute. This was with millions of people getting the iPhone 5 (probably a good portion of them on Verizon.) My wife just had to call their tech support because her 4S wasn't getting on 3G. Again, she was speaking to someone within less than a minute who was knowledgable. Ironically, as I write this, it turns out the 3G network is down. But Verizon outages like this are very rare and in this day in age of complete crap support and idiot agents, I'd almost rather have a day of outage every year supported by decent people than only an hour supported by morons.
If you're on a budget, you can get good reception (so long as you stay in a city), unlimited 4G data, text and 300 minutes for $35 a month with no contract, about half what other carriers charge. Customer service is moronic, and you do have to buy a phone which will set you back a few bucks but you'll get it back within a few months.
The killer feature for me, though.. is talk and data simultaneous on an iphone.. only at&t can do that so far.
Not sure about tmobile, but no lte makes that kinda stinky.
Not only the simultaneous connections (due to orthogonal signaling) but also due to its longer range and higher capacity in general. GSM being TDMA has a strict limit of 20 per tower and bandwidth usage is far less efficient.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
price =/= service or quality of service...
sprint and at&t have the most coverage but the shittiest service
Verizon has the best service and ok coverage
T-mobile is middling
as is all the secondary carriers see: cricket, boost, tracphone, virgin mobile etc.
Personally I use Virgin mobile. I modified my settings so I have sprint level priority since it runs off sprint servers.
Verizon is the most expensive but has the fastest data.
-Noc
I pay too much for my cellphone bill, but I've found Verizon to have the best coverage and speed. Don't expect good customer service from any of them. They all are horrible. I was lucky to get grandfathered into real unlimited data with Verizon though, and even was able to keep it through and upgrade from 3G to 4G (Droid 2 to Droid 4). Sprint is really good if you can keep your travels into their coverage area. AT&T seems to be just mediocre overall, so it's really not bad, but it's not exactly good either. If you stay within the city and don't ever go anywhere, there's lots of services like MetroPCS that are SUPER cheap, however I can't vouch for their speed or quality as I don't know anyone that has used it for a smartphone.
Verizon has the best service (in terms of quality) in cities. But in the west at least, AT&T seems like they have better coverage outside cities than Verizon... I just switched to Verizon, and I have better luck making calls at my house but venturing up into the mountains of Colorado I lose signal in places where AT&T was somewhat there (mountains are pretty rough on cell phone signal though).
Out east I think Verizon is supposed to be better everywhere.
One thing that Verizon actually does seem to do though that is important, is to upgrade equipment more often than AT&T did.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I've never had a dropped call with Verizon. Are you sure it wasn't your phone that had the issue?
I've gone to a smartphone run as a wifi-only SIP VOIP phone, it works where there is wifi (many places) and costs nothing. Cellular service in the U.S. is hopeless.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
I think it's because you had a phone that had bad reception. I've never had a dropped call on Verizon networks. My experiences are mostly limited to the east coast of the US.
If you call it "living abroad" and are all into smart phones, then you really belong over there.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Check out JD Power. They rank the carriers region by region. Here in the northeast they give the nod to Verizon.
Why can't I mod this article/story flamebait?
Pigeons will soon be the more secure method of communication.
Leave Your Cellphone at Home
The NSA Is Building the Countryâ(TM)s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)
No, he's talking out his arse. For one, his talk about CDMA use is nonsense - Korea, Japan and Vietnam all use US-style CDMA, and Australia did for a while before dropping it. The most widespread 3G system is W-CDMA (called UMTS when it's run at 2.1GHz), so all the world is using a form of CDMA.
On the technical front, he's talking crap, too. The way CDMA works is that everyone on a channel transmits on the same frequency at the same time, but everyone's signal is scrambled using a different permutation of the "convolution code". This means that to each user, every other user's signal appears as noise. The scrambling needs to be precisely synchronised for this to work properly, hence the need for high-accuracy, (typically GPS-derived) time in base stations. It also means that adding more users to a channel just degrades the signal for everyone and gradually reduces the effective coverage area of the base. This is sold as an advantage, as you don't need as many bases to get coverage of the same size area if users are sparse.
The complication comes in when you have a nearby mobile and a more remote mobile: assuming they have the same transmission power capability, if both transmit as full power, the nearby mobile's signal, appearing as noise when the base is trying to decode the remote mobile's signal, will totally swamp it. The base has to actively manage the transmit power of all mobile stations so that each one is transmitting at the lowest power at which it can receive a reliable signal. This is a complicated optimisation problem that uses lots of CPU power in the base station. It sends literally hundreds of transmit power management messages each second to each mobile. W-CDMA, with wide 5MHz channels, also gives the base station freedom to assign different size parts of the code tree to different mobiles, allowing bandwidth and reliability to be traded off on yet another level.
The reason you can get dropouts is that a bad decision by the base, or a badly behaved mobile that's closer to the base than you can cause the base to lose your signal. Also, excessive users on the channel (i.e. network operator not building enough base stations for number of users) will tend to cause the people with marginal signal to lose their connection.
By comparison, in a TDMA system (like GSM, iDEN or TETRA) each active mobile is assigned a timeslot, and they only transmit/receive in their allocated timeslot. Once you have a timeslot (making a call or establishing a CSD connection), it's yours until you give it up as long as you'e in the cell. If there are too many active users in the cell, you can't get a timeslot and therefore can't make a call. GPRS/EDGE packet data uses dynamically allocated timeslots that are assigned for brief periods - just long enough to send/receive a few packets at a time. There's also the issue of control channel capacity - control channels are used for call establishment sequences, SMS, cell broadcast packet timeslot negotiation, and authentication/keep-alive traffic. Control channels are a limited resource that can be over-utilised by having too many users, too many data connections, or too much SMS traffic.
Sounds simpler, right? Well, it isn't quite so easy. Remember the speed of radio wave propagation isn't infinite? If everyone was the same distance from the base, getting the timeslots to line up would be easy, but as they aren't the more distant a mobile is from the base, the earlier they have to transmit, so that the signal arrives at the right moment as seen by the base ("timing advance"). If this isn't managed correctly, received signals will overlap and corrupt each other, particularly if the signal from one (presumably closer) mobile is far stronger than the signal from another (presumably more distant) mobile. There's also a limit to how much timing advance a base can manage, meaning that under ideal signal propagation conditions there will be a distance lockout point where you will be cut off abruptly (IIRC it's typically configured for 15km, 35km or 50km for GSM, depending on user density and cell layout - it loses some capacity when configured for longer lockout distances).
Anyway, it's not that either system is designed to drop your call, they just have different trade-offs.
I have had ATT for a while and found it particularly frustrating. The "4G" is unreliable and even if you have several bars you can have zero data throughput. I travel frequently to LA and Florida and had poor service both places. Last LA trip we had a biz dinner at a place near the beach and I had no service, my buddy had full Verizon LTE.
Switched the iPhone 5 about a week ago and went to Verizon and its insanely better. LTE feels about as fast as WiFi at home, and actually faster than some hotel WiFis. I was back in LA the last few days and had great service in areas I had zero on ATT. Would deff recommend Verizon, eps with an LTE phone.
Other cool note: VZ lets you tether free, ATT makes you pay additional.
OP, what are you hoping to get from this Ask Slashdot that you couldn't get from doing your own research? What next, "how do I fix my computer?".
"You can justify anything by putting it in quotes, adding a famous name and making it a sig" - Albert Einstein
Sensorly.com provides coverage maps from user-generated data. I don't know how good the quality of the data is, but it allows you to compare many different carriers and avoids relying on the carriers themselves.
$168/month with Verizon. Two smartphones, grandfathered into the $30/month unlimited data (for a little bit longer at least). Dumb phone for my elderly mother. So between data and family share, that's $80/month. Add in the unlimited text and other crap, that's $100/moneth. So $68/month for the base plan plus taxes and bullshit fees and junk. Yeah it sucks, but who's better? Is it worth $5/month or so for the hassle?
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
But Sprint has unlimited data.
It's a seriously stupid Ask Slashdot. Unless you state where you will be living, how often you will travel and where, how you use your service, and what your priorities are, no one can answer. Different carriers would be better for two different families living in the same city depending on a whole bunch of factors.
The US is a big place, and even within relatively small geographical areas there can be a lot of variation. Look at where you are going to be, and look at who has the towers and the coverage. There are even areas where cricket has a decent score.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
If you define best as in most reliable coverage, the answer tends to be Verizon regardless of the city in question. This is doubly true as soon as you get into more rural areas, but it's worthwhile in the city as well. (ie, Slightly less likelihood of losing signal in elevators, inside buildings, etc.. than AT&T or T-mobile. Call quality also tends to be better, with less distortions and other weirdness in my experience.)
For what it's worth, I've also found Verizon's support to be quite good. I'm not sure why all the vitriolic posts about them; every time I've needed them (maybe 4-5 times over the past half decade?), their support has been prompt and helpful, even for weird things like playing musical chairs with phones in an account while simultaneously preserving all upgrade/contract dates. It is also all US-based, and has great hours well into the evening. What more do you want, especially in this day and age of overseas, outsourced support from India that you can barely understand?
Verizon knows they are the best though, and thus rapes your wallet in every conceivable way as a result. If money is your bottom line, don't even look at them. Go with T-mobile or even AT&T. If however you want the best coverage and quality of service, Verizon is the way to go in most places.
i think nation wide verizon probably has the best coverage , or so they say.
$30 a month buys 300 minutes, unlimited texting, and unlimited 3g/4g (throttled after 2.5 gigs)
I worked in field applications in my previous job -- I lived by my cell phone & I was all over the place always, and 100% connectivity was paramount for me... I would also often need to do conference calls while travelling the highway. I tried a couple of carriers, and then tried Verizon. A few things I could tell you about Verizon:
0) Incomparable coverage -- I almost always had coverage everywhere across the country.
1) Rarely dropped any call... only intermittently driving I-5 across Camp Penalton.
2) I worked many times in an RF SHIELDED building, and I got calls ringing through the shielding.
So, for me there was no comparison. It cost more, but my butt was on the line with my connectivity, and I had to have that service -- and I have the service to this day.
Recently though, I had to go to take my dog to a remote area above Temecula in California to shelter my Dog for a trip. I could get coverage (bars) there, but I could not connect a call through. The lady running the kennel said that ATT was the only provider that worked there... So... for remote areas, maybe ATT is catching up? I've heard stories that ATT coverage is not so great everywhere, but at least in this one place it was the only option.
Bring your phone from korea. It will work on ATT. Get a pre-paid straight talk SIM but do NOT use over 2GB of data/mo. They have a very lame hard limit grrr.
If you have a penta-band (Galaxy Nexus is the only I know off hand) then the T-Mo options for a data lopsided plan is fine if you don't take voice calls (100 min/mo is designed to be too little, of course). But the 5GB of data is sweet, esp since it just gets throttled to edge if you pass it.
If you feel the need to overpay for your phone on a lame contract then pick any of the big 4. They all suck for the price the charge.
FYI: At $25/mo is break even for unlimited service in CONUS. If you pay anything more you should expect *something* right?
All of them.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Mainly because it was Cingular when I started there, and they haven't yet pissed me off enough to bother going through the effort of switching. I am unable to tell you about the nuts and bolts of my plan because it really just doesn't interest me and I'm too lazy to open another tab and track down the details. This is what I know of it, though:
- I can't comment about dropped calls, simply because I hardly ever use the thing as an actual phone. On the rare occasion that I do use it as a phone, I push a few buttons and it connects me to other people. Then I talk to them. Usually briefly.
- When I want to know where I am, my device locates me quite accurately on a map. A map, in fact, that is a remarkably useful thing by itself.
- If I wish to take part in the Internet, my device connects me to it. The connection is adequate. It is certainly not as lively as I prefer, but I never expect much from any connection away from my own desk. And I'm really not all that interested in taking part in the Internet when I'm away from my desk, anyway.
- My device takes decent photos and video. This is a key feature in my life. As a father of a 6-year-old, I cannot overstate the value of always having a camera and video camera in my pocket.
- My device is also quite good at keeping boredom at bay. It can carry around a ridiculous amount of video games, movies, music and books.
- It's also useful for keeping track of my life.
- And there's a meaninglessly large amount of apps for the thing. The actual number is meaningless because I will never even look at more than a tiny fraction of them.
Come to think of it, it's a rather remarkable device. And it costs about the same as my cable.
"GSM being TDMA has a strict limit of 20 per tower"
Citation please, or stuff it in your memory slot. I see T-Mobile towers around Phoenix that are being hit by way more than 20 user simultanously.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I'd add www.coveragemapper.com and www.cellmapper.net to the list although I'm not sure how complete their coverage maps are for USA; pretty good for Canada.
I checked out opensignal.com (formerly opensignalmaps.com) and was disappointed in the countries & cities they had maps for.
But who talks on their phone any more? Really? You do?
I still do but not nearly enough to get in the way of whatever else I want to do with my Sprint phone. It's a bullet point issue ("our product is better, neener neener!") that's virtually a non-issue in actual use.
Sig for hire.
The killer feature for me, though.. is talk and data simultaneous on an iphone.. only at&t can do that so far.
Every carrier should be able to do this with the iPhone 5, since it is 4G.
You left in 2005 or so and there were no smart phones? I bought my first in 1998, and it wasn't even that novel, though it was WindowsCE (nothing makes you wince like WinCE). I used VoiceStream and had no problems with calls or speed. The biggest problem was having to pay for Opera Mobile at the time.
But as my subject says, coverage is a local issue. Some are great on one part of town, and horrible on another. So asking the world about what to get when you move to the US is like asking which gas station chain has the best prices in the USA.
Learn to love Alaska
Mobile companies and networks in the US are out to milk as much money as possible from their customers. Creating a good product or network is the least of their concerns.
You're used to the "wicked speeds" and are looking for coverage compared to South Korea? Try some perspective first. Detroit has parking lots bigger than South Korea, and my personal backyard network would probably qualify as a MAN.
Kidding, mostly. But before you cop an attitude about dropped calls and poor reception, you might consider that you're using your experience in a nation the size of one of our urban areas and then asking for that in North America.
For the sarcasm impaired, here's a graphic. And yes, it probably could be argued that Detroit IS a parking lot the size of South Korea. Just with no DMZ. (Well, or all DMZ. Depends on how you want to call it.) http://www.ifitweremyhome.com/compare/US/KR
MetroPCS is about to be T-Mobile, so not really a separate option.
paintball
I'm grandfathered in on their unlimited data plan and share 400 minutes and 1000 texts with a second line. Unlimited mobile to mobile too. Throw in a 20% discount from a former employer and we're paying about $115/mo including taxes. I travel a lot and the coverage is excellent all over the country. The other day I compared plans with Verizon. They came in at $160/mo (before taxes!!!) and that was sharing 5GB of data, not unlimited. Way too expensive. Plus, they don't use SIM cards so you can't use one of their phones anywhere overseas. Not a big fan of VZ. Sprint and Tmobile come in at about what I'm paying now. The contract-free providers are not much cheaper although it's tempting. I'd like to be able to use the same phone I have now if I switch to contract-free but it seems they want you to buy another phone. For now, I'll probably just stick with AT&T. They all kind of suck but the service is good so no real incentive to change yet.
Let me simplify this.
Go with t-mobile.
T-mobile coverage sucks where you live? Well, then you're stuck with Verizon (or whoever else is around).
What about AT&T you ask? Let me tell you. If you're a person who never had to deal with AT&T, you're one lucky lifeform. I'm not so lucky. I pay twice the AT&T advertised rate to the monopoly cable ISP for my home just so that I won't have to deal with AT&T.
Sprint, I don't know about.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
No, I'm sorry, but that is wrong. I tested it the other night.. My friend set up tethering on his verizon phone and I started streaming video via his wi-fi. Phone #3 calls in to the tethering phone, and data drops 100% so the phone can ring.
I had a sucky sig.
Take your pick: Choose whichever one fucks you over the least. And that's the tough part, because no matter what you're bound to get fucked over from multiple directions no matter what carrier you choose. And when you sign a contract, you basically sign yourself to get fucked over for two years straight with no way out of it. If you try to weasel your way out of a contract, you'll get fucked hardcore with an early termination fee.
Good luck...
The big two are Verizon and AT&T. They're also the most expensive, and it's generally not necessary to buy service DIRECTLY from them.
If you're in AT&T's service area, and want service with them, sign-up with T-Mobile. You'll want to make sure you get a dual-band phone, but you'll be able to roam onto AT&T's GSM.
Verizon generally has the best coverage, and is the most expensive. If you want service with them, sign-up with Sprint... Sprint is cheaper, and allows you free roaming onto Verizon's network whenever needed. Sprint is also nice in that they advertise that they have no caps/limits on their data plans, but you should expect slow-down / congestion using data on their network during peak times...
The only reason you might NOT want to use this strategy, is if you want extra fast and super reliable data service. I, personally, don't care... I've got fast WiFi access at home, work, and when visiting family and all my friends. So that pretty much leaves streaming Pandora and others to my car stereo while driving down the freeways.
On Sprint's network, I haven't had my streaming audio stop mid-stream (yet) but I wouldn't expect video streaming such as youtube to be smooth, whereas Verizon's deeper network is faster, and more consistently so. Plus, Sprint is in a bad spot, transitioning it's 4G service from WiMax to LTE. Of course Verizon and AT&T's LTE networks are both pretty patchy yet, so I recommend just being content with 3G (and WiFi) for the next couple years.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I've found the pocket to be ideal to carry my cell phone. It has just the right size, and I've got it with me all the time.
SCNR
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
because I don't know that yet - wherever the jobs are is where I'll be. Most likely Silicon Valley, but I'm not limiting my choices. Got a job for a mobile app developer? I'm there.
Cheers to Maow, fermion and be99 - best info so far
http://www.straighttalk.com/ Get the AT&T network SIM - pay $45/month - use your own phone. I got this for my son and so far it has worked fine. It is supposed to be unlimited, but as usual that really means about 2 GB/month. NO contract. You can drop it anytime. I have both AT&T and Verizon phones now (work and home) and honestly they each have an area where the other one works better. Sprint and T-Mobile are not good out in the countryside.
I've used Verizon Wireless since roughly 2002; I've only had to call customer service a handful of times, but it was usually painless and quick. The only time things took a while was when I had to get my phone serviced under the best-buy service plan, and I "lost" my unlimited data. The Verizon rep got me my unlimited data back, but it took a couple of weeks to receive a waiver.
Longer version: I left my phone in my jeans when they went in the wash. Took it to bby, where I had a service plan for the phone, and they gave me a temporary feature phone and, while activating it, told the Verizon rep that I had unlimited data and that they should give it back to me when I received my repaired phone. When I got my phone back, they put me on a metered plan. The Verizon rep who worked on getting my unlimited back said that bby had screwed up and that, since I had a smart-phone data plan, they were supposed to give me a smart-phone as a temp. Tbh, I believe the Verizon rep because I recall clearly that when I had gone to bby, the person who handled my service claim said they didn't have an open phone to give me to use as a temp and called her manager over, who told her to open up & give me the cheapest phone they had on hand.
This is not the greatest sig in the world, no. This is just a tribute.
I pay $210/month, but I got 6 lines, unlimited minutes, nation wide roaming, best coverage in the mid-west(I get 4-5 bars where many AT&T/Verizon get no service), unlimited text/pic/video messaging, insurance on every line, and wife has a 2.5GB data plan with $10/1GB overage, and all non-smart phones cost $0.01 every 18 months.
StraightTalk costs $45/month for unlimited voice/data/sms, without contract! They use the AT&T 3g network so you get better coverage than T-mobile. They use sim cards which will actually work on a LOCKED T-mobile or AT&T phone.
The only reasonably priced 4G is MetroPCS. You pay 50-60 a month (again, unlimited data, no contract) and you need to be in a big city. Their big drawback is that they don't use sim cards and their handsets suck compared to everybody else. They're at least a year behind in tech.
Everybody else will rape you without lube. Sprint will give you unlimited 4G for $100/month, AT&T and Verizon are way worse. I still can't believe they went from unlimited data to selling by the gig. Their greed is unfathomable.
I examined this and other similar maps based on (urban) neighborhoods where I've had terrible reception on particular providers, and I don't think you can easily tell from these maps. I think it may be best to just ask people who already have phones and will be living and working in areas where you will be.
It's a new company running over T-Mobile's network, $49 unlimited Voice/Text/Internet no roaming fees, no contracts. nationwide 4G. http://www.solavei.com/sethrosen
Just like real estate, sir, it's location, location, location....
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Which network is best depends on where you are. I live in the Hudson Valley north of NY and in this sorta rural area, it's verizon or nothing. Literally. If you will be in a city, and have a consistent commute, you could save money with one of the other carriers. Based on Caller ID, I get more crappy/unreadable signals to my office from T-Mobile callers than anyone else. Oh, and be sure you like the smartphone handset. You'll be stuck with it for two years.
Because it frees you from having to use a phone at all. You can stick your head out the window and shout at more people than mere 'phones' on Sprint can reach.
Not entirely true. If you have 4G (the original) coverage with Sprint, you can connect to that for data and talk on the phone at the same time. I'm not certain what functionality exists in this regard with the new LTE they are rolling out.
Page Plus Cellular will get you Verizon's native network at much reduced cost. But that depends on whether you care about 4G. If you care about 4G, this won't be an option. Also, the largest amount of data they offer in a monthly plan is 2GB, which is fine for most people, but not if you're a heavy data user via your phone.
Good job, wierd_w. I think your post is not only accurate but objective. martypantsROK should understand that if he lives in a large metro area in the USA that he'll have much better results than in a rural area. In rural areas you probably have to use Verizon. I live in a large metro area and I used T-Mobile for years and was happy with them, but I did not use them much for data. My work required me to get a new subsidized phone and I was not able to stay with T-Mobile as for reasons unknown to me, they are the only one of the four major US carriers that my company does not have an agreement with. martypantsROK is likely to be very unimpressed with US mobile and internet service after having lived in South Korea, but that's just how it is.
Try them all out for a month or two each before deciding.
Never argue with a man carrying a water buffalo
I'm used to South Korea's wicked speeds
When I last went to Korea, and connected to the phone network, wicked speeds is what I was expecting. In reality, things weren't really any faster than I get in most areas of Canada. To add to that, many sites were slower due to what I assume was a lack of cache/etc in Asia. Once you hit a minimum level of quality then the speed difference isn't so noticeable (unless you're into downloading movies/music on your phone, perhaps).
Is it that bad in the US? Everywhere, or just outside of bigger cities?
Actually, I tended to go there because I wasn't all that big into fries as a side. Most burgers I can get away with, but a load of salty, starchy fries tended to leave me feeling bloated and uncomfortable after visiting most other fast food places.
Wendy's offers salad, baked potato, or chili as the side. Chili is a winner for me (especially when they don't forget to pack the extra hot-sauce), but YMMV depending on preference.
Sounds fair. Ask me where my favourite burger place is where I currently live, and the answer is probably Wendy's.
Ask me when I lived in the east, and the answer would likely have been Harvey's (but they don't seem to have one in BC, Canada, much to my dismay).
Compare T-Mobile value plans and buy your phone directly instead of through the provider. Saves a chunk of change ($20/mo * 24mo per phone, really). Unlimited data on T-Mobile is $30/mo, but profile your actual data use. For my single line use, I get $10/mo 2GB plan (overflows into unlimited free low-speed Edge data) and don't use nearly that; I also noticed the Facebook app eats bandwidth (it eats battery faster than the charger supplies it, too), so I use the Facebook Messenger app but not the full Facebook app.
It may be worth the switch, but it also may be doable to switch away from unlimited data and into something cheaper. Currently I've used 103MB this cycle (since Sep 21), 64.26MB of that is Mint.com (which is heavy), 15MB is Web browser (Facebook, including uploads), 13MB is Google Play Store (app updates), 5.56MB is Gmail, 1.12MB is news and weather.
Notably, when I am home I'm connected to Wifi, so I don't use data between 9pm and 7am. In total roughly 50% of my bandwidth is through Wifi, more if you bulk-load Kindle or bring down from Amazon Cloud Player to the device itself when around Wifi (apparently Amazon MP3 now stores in Cloud Player but lets you copy from Cloud Player to the current device without DRM, instead of being an either-or solution). I'll bring an album or a single book down on 4G LTE, but if I'm syncing my library or several albums of music I'll do that at home ahead of time.
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What do you mean? I couldn't do that on my Motorola Cliq with Android 1.4, but I found out recently that my Galaxy Nexus will continue downloading from Wifi or 4G LTE while taking a cell phone call.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
I hope the questions you ask at job interviews are better thought out. Location was just one of many important factors that you left out.
Plus many towers have as many as three sectors, so that triples capacity right there.
Capacity is based on how small an area the sector is covering and how much spectrum the carrier has allocated to the cellsite.
So, if you're returning to the US, does that mean there's a computer-related job opening in somewhere in South Korea? 'cuz I've about had it with the lack of wireless and wired broadband here in the supposedly most advanced country in the world. If you could introduce me to your South Korean employer, I'd very much appreciate it.
(Actually, I have Verizon and Century Link. Speed is next to useless, but good wireless coverage, no dropped calls and my DSL line is rarely down.)
I would have to agree. It also doesn't hurt that you can tether on their network for free, and there's really not a whole hell of a lot they can do about it.
If you are talking about t-mobile, that used to be true with my LG Optimus T phone (and various Nokia non-smartphones before that), but I just upgraded to a Galaxy S II, and they now hit me with a $5/month tethering fee.
Or to put your paragraph into simpler words: All of the carriers suck badly.
That is what happens when there is no serious competition. They all cut as many corners as possible to inflate their stock price by a few pennies. No matter which carrier you choose, you will have high prices, pathetic customer service (even if the actual rep is nice), and crappy coverage/dropped calls (except in certain areas with certain carriers).
All shit.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
That is correct on Verizon when using anything but 4G LTE. 4G LTE works while on a call.
I'm in mid/west lower Michigan. I'm in a fairly rural area by comparison, but only about 20 miles outside Grand Rapids.
I got a cheap cell phone in the late '90s through my friend who worked at Best Buy. Omnipoint (later VoiceStream, later T-Mobile) was cheap, but the coverage wasn't that great around home (though nobody really was at that time). In '99, I got a job at a company that sold Nextel, so I got one of those cheap. Again, coverage wasn't great (it was often referred to as "Nextime", because it might actually work the next time you tried it). However, Nextel's Direct Connect really took off here (this region used up all its numbers in the first fleet, so they had to add a second fleet and eventually cross-fleeting ability so new users could talk to their friends and family on the old fleet). The more people you knew with Nextels, the more useful it was.
I stuck with Nextel until '05, when the Direct Connect wasn't really useful to me anymore due to changes in who I was talking to and their chosen cell service. I went to Verizon, who have pretty widespread coverage around here. VZW seems to be the default if some random person wants a cell phone. As others have said, they have pretty good coverage for calls and texts. My current employer uses VZW for their cell phones, so I switched from my personal VZW plan to the company VZW plan when I started working here.
When the iPhone 3G came out, the company started getting them for some employees, and obviously those people switched to AT&T. I eventually got a 3G and switched also. When the VZW iPhone 4 came out, we started going back for new users. When the 4S was released, the company made the decision to switch everyone back to VZW.
My early experiences probably don't count for much. There wasn't much coverage here at all, and quite a few things have changed in the past 10+ years. My recent experiences involve only 3G, due to using the iPhone 3G/4/4S. However, there was a noticeable speed drop going from the ATT iPhone 4 to the VZW iPhone 4S. Whereas I'd normally get about 3Mb down with ATT, I'm lucky to break 1Mb with VZW (with full bars on each). With ATT, I had noticeable areas of no coverage. A few coworkers got femtocells because ATT simply lacks coverage in a number of places around here. Since switching to VZW, I don't know if I've ever seen it without at least a little coverage (short of my annual camping trip to Middle-of-Nowhere, Canada). However, I frequently find myself with ~3 bars on VZW, where ATT usually seemed to have 4-5 bars (when I had signal). With the 4S having HSPA+, I really wished I was back on ATT, especially since they seem to have added a tower close to my house out in the sticks - one day I suddenly had 5 bars and great speeds. I'm hoping to upgrade to the iPhone 5, largely for LTE (though VZW's map doesn't show any coverage at home or work, but it'll still be handy when I'm out and about).
I never had any issues with any of the companies regarding my personal accounts, so I can't speak for customer service on any of them (though the lack of problems itself is something to mention). I don't deal with the details of the business account. The only thing I've done is having ATT unlock my old iPhone, which was a bit of work. Their automated system replied that it got my request, but never sent me an update to let me know it was finished. When I called in, Support said it had already been processed, but something wasn't quite right with it, so they did it again. Other than that, I have nothing to report.
First question, are you getting a new phone or bringing your own? Second, you specified nationwide roaming but will that be in primarily cities or will you be in rural areas too? Third, what is your priority? Price, speed, ubiquitous coverage? Like the old saying goes, pick two.
Wife and I dropped Verizon a little over a year ago because the relatively strong signal we used to get at home (a few miles outside of Chapel Hill, NC) had vanished seemingly overnight. Instead we had phones that would drain their batteries to the point of shutdown overnight "searching for signal."
We decided to try Sprint. Coverage looked good based on their map. But when we got home with the new phones we had pretty much the same experience as with Verizon - stand in one specific corner of one room if you wish to make a call. And yeah, the battery drains and the phone dies overnight "searching for signal." So we took 'em back. Sprint was actually really good about it - they gave us no hassle and recommended we go back to Verizon. So we did.
The Verizon guy I spoke with the next day was a total douche. He actually told me that I had "lost a lot of credibility with Verizon" when I attempted to switch, so I could no longer get the deal they had offered me mere days before to try to retain me as a customer. I shrugged this off and signed up again at a shiny new anus-burning price point. Note to Elvis, the Verizon rep: I will never forget that call, Elvis, and if we ever meet in person I will enjoy beating the smug out of your little punk ass.
So we got our new Verizon shit phones. Lo and behold, we had the same issue with no service in the house, and phones dying overnight "searching for signal." Another call to Verizon put me in touch with a much nicer rep who agreed to sell me (yes, sell me) a "network extender" that would plug into my router and allow me to make calls from any room in the house, and would prevent the batteries from draining overnight. They wanted $300 for this magical device. I told them no and that I would be canceling my service. After a few minutes on hold they offered me the device at $200. Like a fool I bought it. So here we are a little over a year later, just beyond the midway point of the 2-year contract. We have to choose one of a few different specific locations to stand in for a call to have reasonable quality. And every once in awhile the batteries still drain overnight - I attribute this to the black box they sold me being a piece of shit. The blinky lights confirm it - when they're all blue battery life is good. When one flashes purple it's gonna be a dead phone morning.
I'm not sure where to go from here. It certainly won't be Verizon again. Unless they offer to send Elvis to my house in person, where I shall use him as a catharsis pinata whenever my service sucks.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
I'll second Ting. They are pretty obviously the best bang for your buck if you live in an area with decent Sprint coverage.
I don't use much data and that is definitely something I am thinking about when I get a new plan. Part of the reason is if I do anything data-heavy with my phone, I do it at home over wifi. My wife is worse since she is always streaming stuff at work. I'm about to make her get her own account and deal with it, too much drama about "needing" to stream stuff 8 hours a day at work.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
Yes, that's two smartphones + data plan and a 24% work discount.
Scary ain't it?
2720mb (so I'm using about 2G-5GB a month, plus my wife's usage)
Staying away from Verizon won't help unless you actually manage to stay on 2G GSM the whole time. If you're on 3G, you're on some form of CDMA and will have to deal with these issues.
Thanks to all for the comments, both the serious and helpful ones and the fun ones. I think I have all the data I need - America's telecom systems are just as jacked up as they were when I left (sigh).
Yeah starts not being worth it once you get to the $20 for 10GB plans. Still, $30 unlimited on T-Mobile vs $30 2GB + pay money for overrun on Verizon (and on T-Mobile it's $10 2GB + slow shit after 2GB at no extra charge, WTF Verizon)
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If she has an android phone, tell her to get Amazon MP3 and transfer all her shit from Amazon Cloud Player to the SD card or internal storage. Then she doesn't need to stream. Also why can't she stream from her work PC?
Support my political activism on Patreon.
She streams talk radio and other live broadcasts where downloading MP3s isn't an option. Since she MUST listen to it live or she will shrivel up and die. Also, she is a federal government employee so her computer is locked down worse than a teenage girl when Pedobear is in the neighborhood.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
Seriously, if she has signal, she can stream talk radio from ... I don't know, RADIO?
Your wife sounds like a psycho. Anyone addicted to talk radio inevitably becomes a liberal asstard freak or a neocon asstard freak. Addiction to politics causes, besides extreme assholism, high levels of stress leading to sickness and heart problems. As the damage increases from prolonged exposure, symptoms such as all-your-friends-are-morons and get-new-friend-that-agree-with-you appear, eventually leading to advanced cases of divorce-your-husband-because-he-licks-Obama's-asshole-but-he's-still-not-as-liberal-as-you-are and a severe case of all-your-friends-are-assholes.
You should stage an intervention before she divorces you and indoctrinates your kids. Or worse, runs your cell phone bill up.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Apparently not in the cement and steel canyon of downtown. Trust me, I've had to hear all about it and nod along, wishing some football or something would come along to rescue me.
Not really a psycho, she doesn't listen to the political talk radio. She's addicted to Rover's Morning Glory. I find it boring and stupid, but she likes it. She finds video games boring and stupid, but I like it. So we each have our thing. Meh.
This is why, if you read up a few posts, I mentioned that she might need her own cell phone plan while I'll keep my elderly mother on mine and just have one data plan for me and my mom's dumb phone with voice only.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
Sorry, I meant per channel, whereas CDMA doesn't have a definable limit.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Not only the simultaneous connections (due to orthogonal signaling) but also due to its longer range and higher capacity in general. GSM being TDMA has a strict limit of 20 per tower and bandwidth usage is far less efficient.
Haha, what are you smoking? TDMA is a method of communication, just like HTTP is a communication method (albeit a higher layer), and has nothing to do with speed.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=tdma
The goal of computer science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.