Best cell service providers, (areas covered)

[mowingman]

Ok, lets forget all the advertising hype and go with real world experience. What are the 2 or 3 best cell service providers for those of us out on the road with our RV's.
We currently have AT&T, but am being ripped off on a monthly basis.
From your experience, what other providers have good coverage across the middle 2/3 of the U.S. Especially when you get out away from the major cities. We have got to reduce our phone bills. Thanks.

[GoPackGo]

I've been full timing for 4 years now and have used Verizon the entire time. 99.9 percent of the time I have 'good enough' coverage everywhere I go, including near Lake Superior on the Michigan/Wisconsin border where I am right now.

I have had the new Verizon unlimited plan since about March. I use my phone as a hot spot and as near as I can tell, I have not been throttled, even though I exceed 10 gigs hotspot usage every month (Verizon treats hot spot usage separately from 'phone' data usage). $84 per month, including taxes. I do not mind paying a little more to get good coverage.

I have the option to add a MiFi device, which would come with it's own data limits, for an extra $20/month if I decide using my phone as a hotspot doesn't work very well. So far, it has.


* I should add that I have been using a Wilson Sleek to boost phone reception since day one. I generally gain at least one bar, and usually two when using it. Looks like they have a new name - 'WeBoost'. Regardless, they seem to work. I have a kit for my truck and also their 'home and office' kit for my fiver. But always remember, there MUST be a signal to boost.

[Bill_S_1]

Just about to give Red Pocket a try. They sell (Amazon, ebay, or direct) a sim-kit that supplies 3 sim cards. You can choose and activate only one of them. So whether you want to be on ATT, Verizon, T-Mobile or Sprint, the price and plan is the same for each.

You can buy a month plan (try it out), a 6 month prepaid for a nice discount, or a 12 month prepaid for an even better discount.

Might be worth a look, for those of you (like me) that are tired of the games that ATT & Verizon play.

[cummins2014]

Having Verizon, and having coverage in Montana ,where we spend part of the summer is enough to convince me its the best coverage. Our kids visit us, and have AT&T, they do not have coverage at all where we are at, and have to borrow our phones when needed.

[Shearwater]

Look at Tracfone. Their Android phones use the Verizon system towers and their charges are extremely low.

[sdianel_-acct_c]

We have used Verizon all over the US and even in Canada with no problems. We have cell service and the Mi-Fi internet with them. Not cheap. If you don't need speed they have "unlimited" plan but beware and read the fine print. They throttle the speed after a certain amount of usage. I switched to their "unlimited" and switched back to the plan I had before with no penalty. I'd rather pay more for the speed.

[jrclark]

We had US Cellular for 20 plus years but when they started playing games when out of their area we switched to Verizon. We now have Verizon's unlimited data plan. We will never go back to US Cellular because of the games they play and the rude staff in their stores.

[Bill_Satellite]

mowingman wrote:
Ok, lets forget all the advertising hype and go with real world experience. What are the 2 or 3 best cell service providers for those of us out on the road with our RV's.
We currently have AT&T, but am being ripped off on a monthly basis.
From your experience, what other providers have good coverage across the middle 2/3 of the U.S. Especially when you get out away from the major cities. We have got to reduce our phone bills. Thanks.

Verizon has as good or better service than AT&T. The good news is that Verizon will rip you off on a monthly basis as well. The both charge the exact same fees.

[PatrickA51]

I have two Samsung smartphone. I also have a HP Lap Top. I pay $50.00 for one of our phone and get billed $45.00 for our second line. Un-limited data on both phone. We don't have a hotspot, but I am thinking about getting one so we can have our lap top with us. We have always had cellphone from Net 10. Which is I believe part of Tracfone.
I am looking to purchase a Mobile device but am not having any luck.

[road-runner]

Which is best depends on where you are and how much airtime you need. Overall, verizon has the best coverage, but there are locations that have ATT coverage and no verizon coverage. If your airtime usage is relatively low you can save a bundle using prepaid phones. Tracfone uses verizon, ATT, or sprint as the primary carrier depending on which phone you get and where you activate it. Page Plus uses the verizon network. Straight Talk is another big provider, don't remember which carriers they use. All 3 of these companies are owned by Carlos Slim. For a better list of the prepaids, look at the forums at howardforums.com. If you want you can read those forums until you're totally sick of it all. Like another post mentioned, we use 2 carriers: A tracfone on ATT and a Page Plus phone on verizon. We pay about $100/year for the Tracfone and $50/year for Page Plus, with pretty low airtime usage.

[mowingman]

I see I am not the only one who could not decide what section this post should be in. I started it in a Tech forum, one moderator moved it to General RVing, then another moderator moved it back to the Tech forum. Like our RV life style, it just keeps moving around. 🙂

[Thom02099]

As for coverage, none of them are all that great when you get off the beaten path. I have Verizon. And I visit Estes Park CO frequently. In parts of town, I lose service, while still in town. And getting up in the mountains, you'll not get service at all. Yes, I know it's because of the mountains and lack of cell towers.

But the same is also true on vast stretches of I-70 and I-80 in both Kansas and Nebraska, as well as eastern Colorado, and eastern Wyoming along I-25. Wide open areas, but little to no cell service, except as one approaches towns.

The "coverage maps" that they publish mean nothing. Real world - there's lots of places you'll not have service.

[jplante4]

Moved from General RBVing

[JimBollman]

My wife has Verizon and I have an ATT reseller. She use to use a Verizon reseller. We purposely went with two different carriers to improve our chances of always having one phone work. In real use from the Rockies to Maine to Florida I have had ATT service when she didn't have Verizon maybe 2 or 3 times. She has had service when I didn't more times than I can remember. Part of the problem may be the roaming thing since the resellers we were using didn't roam.

Last time around my wife went with straight Verizon because with a plan that had an iPhone and an iPad it was only a bit more than having two plans with resellers and a lot easier. I plan to get a new phone soon and will add it to my wife's plan for an additional $20/month.

If the resellers have plans that meet your needs you can save a lot of money. Check out PagePlus for Verizon and H20 for ATT. You can get as low as $80/year if you have simple needs. It is one plan per device and the yeary fee rolls over if you don't use it all. I have very limited needs and my roll over got to be over $200 and I switched to a $10/quarter plan to spend down the roll over.

[Dutch_12078]

Our two Android smartphones are from Tracfone and use Verizon towers. We average about $16 per month for voice and minimal data service and pay annually. Our primary data carrier is AT&T using their Connected Car unlimited 4G/LTE plan at $20/mo on a Unite hotspot, and our backup data carrier is Verizon using a grey market $5/month unlimited 3G plan on a Jetpack. We also use a Maximum Signal Max Amp RV booster/repeater that has gotten us very usable signals everywhere we've been so far.