And how's your coverage so far?

Currently with T-Mobile and it's prettty good in Houston but considering trying out Cricket (AT&T) for more coverage outside the city.

AT&T. Not bad I guess. Only stuck with them as they are cheaper than Verizon and a good discount on directv.

JDCAG (NOT Colin) said:

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Cricket (AT&T towers, I believe).

Recently jumped over to AT&T for a few months when I needed more international support, but recently switched back.

I see no real difference in call quality or even data speed (I'm sure there is one, but my general use patterns didn't perceive it). Only differences were that AT&T was about $70 more expensive (almost double) and managed to mess up my account multiple times in the 3-4 months I was using them.

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Nice. Are you in Houston by any chance? If so, how's your service overall?

I had AT&T for the last 9 years, but switched to T-Mobile when they started the military pricing. My service as been the same or better so far (Jacksonville, FL to Dallas, TX). The entire drive from Jax to Dallas, we only lost service for about a 2 or 3 miles stretch of road on two occasions, but that was the same when we had AT&T.

The only place where our service was slightly worse was in Emory, TX. With AT&T, we would get 1 bar in some areas of my parents land, but mostly no service. With T-Mobile, it was no service the entire time until we got in closer to highway 19.

My wife streamed directv now while we drove back roads from Emory to Commerce and back, and never lost signal (once we got away from the dead zone around my parents house).

As for price, we paid $233/month with AT&T for 4 lines.
With T-Mobile, we pay $133/month for 5 lines and 2 iwatch plans.

T Mobile. The only place I've had problems was rural New England where only Verizon had signal.

What cell phone do you have currently? If you don't have a newer one then you likely aren't seeing all of tmobile's network which is especially important outside cities. In a good chunk of texas this is band 12 also known as their "extended range lte". http://www.spectrumgateway.com/compatible-phones

They have improved their network significantly in the last few years and we get coverage pretty much everywhere we drive in texas now. That said they are still in the early stages of their 600mhz rollout and this one will really give them a network that can compete with anybody. Right now its mainly in west texas but over the next couple of years they will get it everywhere.

I have a Trakfone. When I re-upped last January, I got 2 years for a little less than $200 (total for two years).

jagouar1 said:

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What cell phone do you have currently? If you don't have a newer one then you likely aren't seeing all of tmobile's network which is especially important outside cities. In a good chunk of texas this is band 12 also known as their "extended range lte". http://www.spectrumgateway.com/compatible-phones

They have improved their network significantly in the last few years and we get coverage pretty much everywhere we drive in texas now. That said they are still in the early stages of their 600mhz rollout and this one will really give them a network that can compete with anybody. Right now its mainly in west texas but over the next couple of years they will get it everywhere.

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iPhone 6S so I can get band 12. Band 71 would be nice but the new iPhones are just too pricey right now and if I go back to Android, I would miss iMessage!

Cricket

T-Mobile

Woodway, western Waco suburb. Good phone and data speeds are much, much faster than AT&T when I switched 18 months ago.

Google Fi. ATT sucks in my neighborhood and near my office, so i dropped it. My Fi bill has never been above $40.

wrinkledink said:

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JDCAG (NOT Colin) said:

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Cricket (AT&T towers, I believe).

Recently jumped over to AT&T for a few months when I needed more international support, but recently switched back.

I see no real difference in call quality or even data speed (I'm sure there is one, but my general use patterns didn't perceive it). Only differences were that AT&T was about $70 more expensive (almost double) and managed to mess up my account multiple times in the 3-4 months I was using them.

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Nice. Are you in Houston by any chance? If so, how's your service overall?

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Sorry, I'm in Dallas.

I do travel to Houston on occasion and have never had an issue, but I basically stay in the city when I'm there.

Cricket -
no longer available plan-grandfathered not really a great deal compared to current ones.

5 lines for $100/month with 5GB/month data limit per line (no sharing)
can upgrade to the new plan for unlimited for $125/month for 5 lines but so far we like having the kids' phones with a hard limit to cell data.

Great to know. I'm curious how they are around China Spring area.

Cricket. $80/month for 2 lines 22 gigs high speed per line. It's the tits. Haven't had any issues with coverage, and I live in rural TN.

zooguy96 said:

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Cricket. $80/month for 2 lines 22 gigs high speed per line. It's the tits. Haven't had any issues with coverage, and I live in rural TN.

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It may be fine for your uses, but 3Mbps is the speed that plan is capped at. Just an FYI for those that may be expecting AT&T/Verizon/T-Mobile speeds. I have two 5GB plans for $70/mo. I'm limited to 8Mbps and at times it seems pretty slow, although it could be my phone's processing power when trying to load pages with lots of images or videos. On a whole though, Cricket is a great value in my opinion.

When you guys switch off of a big-name carriers what do you do with your iPads that have cellular?
Do you leave them on AT&T (in my case) or bring over to new carrier such as Cricket?

LoudestWHOOP! said:

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When you guys switch off of a big-name carriers what do you do with your iPads that have cellular?
Do you leave them on AT&T (in my case) or bring over to new carrier such as Cricket?

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You can't use iPads on Cricket as far as I know.

Google fi

Bill is always <30

$90 after kickback ($80 if both main lines stay under 2gb) for 3 lines, 2 paid + 1 free of unlimited everything on Tmobile. Works great in west Houston.