What's the best cell phone service?

[Kruel J]

It isn't cell phones. Or really even phones at all. It is the constant interruptions they so consistently provide. The nature of my work involves the utmost concentration, so the endless deluge of telephonic nonsense, including calls from "Rachael at card services", is maddening. Or the opposite in which I deliberately turn the infernal machine off, or leave the thing in my vehicle, and my family is peeved that they can't reach me. You can't win.

Just a phone man, just a phone.

 

[CountryGent]

Just a phone man, just a phone.

Alright ... I'll settle down. And I promise that the phone will not experience an unfortunate ... "accident".

 

[Kruel J]

Alright ... I'll settle down. And I promise that the phone will not experience an unfortunate ... "accident".

View attachment 487329

Yeah I'm gonna need you to go ahead and not smash your phone ok? That would be great....

 

[xlsbob]

I've had Verizon for over 20 years, I've gotten text messages in the middle of nowhere once removed. Not always the cheapest but it usually works.

 

[TeacherSmurf]

Yeah I'm gonna need you to go ahead and not smash your phone ok? That would be great....

 

[No_Regerts]

Yeah, not too worried about that. I didn't know you wore a tinfoil hat off duty......

Before we became phonetards, anyone on this forum would have told .gov to eat a bag-o-dicks if they told us to start carrying a transponder on us at all times. Now we can't wait to finance the next $1000 phone.

Remember when you could get a Nokia for $.01 with a new contract?

 

[slimmer13]

Before we became phonetards, anyone on this forum would have told .gov to eat a bag-o-dicks if they told is to start carrying a transponder on us at all times. Now we can't wait to finance the next $1000 phone.

Im cheap, my transponder was only like 2 bills

 

[DirectDrive]

I have T-Mobile but the Verizon guys seem to do better out in the boonies.

Bill next time you're out on a clean-up, do a live phone survey.

 

[Kruel J]

Before we became phonetards, anyone on this forum would have told .gov to eat a bag-o-dicks if they told us to start carrying a transponder on us at all times. Now we can't wait to finance the next $1000 phone.

Remember when you could get a Nokia for $.01 with a new contract?

They had GPS chips too.

 

[No_Regerts]

They had GPS chips too.

Really? See!

 

[notazombie]

Best? Dunno. But I know Tmobile sucks.

 

[Kruel J]

Really? See!

Yup. Phones from ages ago still had AGPS chips in them. I think starting around 2001? It was originally for 911 calls. Before they actually did any mapping stuff. In a former life I was a cell phone geek and used to repair them frequently in my spare time (had a small online business). Not any more.

 

[The Heretic]

It depends on where you are. In general Verizon might be better on the edge of coverage, but all of them have their dead spots depending on where you are specifically and where their towers are in relation to you.

I had Verizon, but it had problems at work and at home - the two places I spent most of my time. So I went to T-Mobile for quite a while, but when I moved up here on the mountain then it had problems here at home, so I went to a VOIP provider that leased data from Sprint and it works great on my property, even down in the gully.

Neighbors say Verizon works well up here. The problem I had with them was they jerked me around on my billing - they switch billing systems and didn't tell me, then required that I set it up again and tried to charge me for them dropping my account.

I am with TextNow now - monthly $19 with no contract, automatically charged to my credit card. With T-Mobile I had to buy 1000 minutes every so often and it wasn't automatically renewed. I do it this way because I rarely used my phone for phone calls.

 

[Joe13]

This....

It depends on where you are. In general Verizon might be better on the edge of coverage, but all of them have their dead spots depending on where you are specifically and where their towers are in relation to you.

Was a field tech for a decade. Depends on where you work and live.

No carrier will work reliably in the sticks. The towers require line of sight and trees dampen that, like carpet and sound in your house.

ATT and T-Mobile are GSM networks.

Sprint and Verizon are CDMA.


My ATT phone works on the side of larch in places, generally where I can see the city.


I'm looking st changing carriers for cost reasons currently but we use a ton of data.

 

[Boboclown]

Verizon is nice sometimes. But there are parts here in the woods or dirt roads where Sprint has been better. Sometimes a buddy's family will call me to get access to him if he was heading to their place after the fishing trips.

 

[tourproto]

I know some of my families plans with other carriers have roaming charges...thought that was a thing of the past...guess not.

ATT doesn't have roaming charges...I would think other carriers wouldn't as well.

Anyone who has roaming charges in the US today either has a super cheap plan, uses a local/tiny carrier or has a really OLD plan (and they should migrate to a newer plan ASAP).

Here is a good link to a recent enough story about GSM vs. CDMA vs. LTE that explains how the standards evolved over time and how in the relative near future, pretty much any phone you buy will be able to switch to any carrier depending on what your coverage needs are in your area.

CDMA vs. GSM: What's the Difference?

 

[Oregonhunter5]

Our home has metal siding. Looks like siding but is metal. Super efficient. My shop has metal siding. Satellites hate metal siding

 

[The Heretic]

Our home has metal siding. Looks like siding but is metal. Super efficient. My shop has metal siding. Satellites hate metal siding

As do most RF devices, especially high frequency ones.

Some providers - especially third party ones - have the ability to use your WiFi to provide service in areas where there is a problem with cell service, or where you want to not use minutes/data on your plan. I use it at home sometimes when I want to download an update for my phone or I want to make an important call from inside the house. Most phones have this capability, some have the ability to make the switch automatically. So if you have a dead spot, say inside a building, you may be able to just use a public WiFi to make/receive calls.

I have Textnow, so I can go to textnow.com and make/receive calls on my computer and text from my computer (most providers now have the ability to text from your computer in one fashion or another).

 

[WAYNO]

I do get around a lot in places that cell service is spotty. In my circles, especially hunting, the first folks to get phone service in the boonies are the Verizon users. So I absolutely say, Verizon has the best coverage. Unfortunately, their business and customer service model is terrible.

And for what it's worth, the only place I've ever been that had no Verizon coverage, but other phones worked, is Vernonia. Go figure. And it's been a couple years since I've been there, so if that's changed, I wouldn't know.

 

[Cogs]

My needs are primarily social media stuff. (Never thought I'd be a social media butterfly, but doing this non-profit stuff pretty well requires it!) I'd like to be posting info and pics while out and about, especially in the woods, however, I need to be able to do that on the cell with comfort and ease. Right now, most of my postings are done from my home base computer because the smart phone I currently have is not very smart.

As Trash No Land is growing, I gotta be able to stay connected no matter where I am. And when we're doing cleanups, I'd like to be able to shout out a live vid once in a while a with good quality video unit. I also need to be using the Cloud and my old little phone is rather confusing with that.

Currently using an inexpensive ZTE Go Phone with At&T service. So this jump will be a huge leap in quality and usability. Since I'm not an apple guy, I'm leaning toward the Galaxy 8 or 9. (Yeah, huge leap!).

I'm likin the Comcast plan. It sounds like 1 gig for 12/mo. I use about 2 gigs so only looking at 24/mo. No contract. They use Verizon. Don't think I could go wrong with that.

So, before I take the leap into real world of communicating, I wanted to check/see some feedback on carriers.

Thanks for sharing your experiences!