After years of cell phone contracts that lock you into a certain provider, many people are used to treating that relationship like a marriage. But just because a certain service provider worked for you ten years ago does not mean that it is best for you today. Different providers perform on different things as new technologies like 5G emerge, and when you move to a new city, the carrier with the “best” signal may be completely different from where you lived before. If you are tired of getting a terrible signal in your own home or constantly getting slow speeds when you are on the road, it may be time to look at other transport companies – there are more amazing options than you would realize.
Don’t just look at cover cards – dig deep
Carriers like to show you their coverage maps, plastered with red, blue or purple dots, to show you how many cities they serve. But the carriers themselves are hardly impartial, reliable sources, and coverage is not a binary thing – just because your city has a red or blue spot does not mean that service will be optimal.
So if you are looking for a new carrier, you need to get as much independent information as you can. Opensignal, for example, is an app that allows users to submit speed and signal tests from across the country, so you can see on a map how any of the four major carriers are doing. (You can also perform a quick speed test yourself to see how your connection compares, and help feed the data pool to others).
Remember, coverage is only part of the equation. Signal strength, speed and deceleration are also tons. Opensignal covers the basics as you type Network Statistics and swing through the results for a given location, but you can also look at things like PCMag‘s annual coverage of the fastest mobile networks for an idea of how speeds may vary from city to city.
But if you really want to drill deep, you need to ask some good old-fashioned questions. See which carrier your friends are using, ask Facebook groups in the area and see if your city or town has a dedicated subreddit with experiences you could potentially exploit. I’ve been to big US cities where my wife’s phone on one service provider would have full signal strength, where my identical phone on another carrier would go wild in the city – coverage maps and aids with many people can not always tell you things like that .
And remember, the coverage of a carrier can change over time, so if someone tells you someone is terrible in the area, ask them when they last used it. (My family is still married to Verizon because of AT & T’s poor rural coverage a decade ago – though AT & T’s Northern Michigan signal has improved drastically since then.) It can also be affected by which phone they use, so try to look for bigger trends instead. than to concentrate too hard on any opinion.
Look beyond the three big carriers
If you have not yet boarded the MVNO train, it’s time to look past Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile and try all the other major carriers out there. While most of the cell phone coverage in the U.S. uses these three networks, there are dozens of mobile virtual network operators – or MVNOs – that use the same towers while offering plans with cheaper or more unique pricing structures. You’ve heard all their names – Cricket Wireless, Republic Wireless, Ting, Straight Talk and others have been around for a number of years. But if you write it off as poorly discounted discount businesses, you may be missing out.