After years of cell phone contracts that tie you to a particular provider, many people are used to treating that relationship like a marriage. But just because a particular operator worked for you 10 years ago, it doesn’t mean it is the best one for you today. Different operators stand out in different ways as new technologies like 5G emerge, and if you move to a new city, the operator with the “best” signal can be completely different from where you lived before. If you are tired of receiving a terrible signal in your own home or constantly getting slow speeds when you are away from home, it may be time to look for other operators – there are more excellent options than you think.
Don’t just look at coverage maps – deep basement
Operators love to publicize their coverage maps, with red, blue or purple dots to show how many cities they serve. But the operators themselves are hardly impartial and reliable sources, and coverage is not binary – just because your city has a red or blue dot doesn’t mean the service will be ideal.
So if you’re looking for a new operator, get as much independent information as you can. Opensignal, for example, is an application that allows users to send speed and signal tests from all over the country, so you can see on a map how any of the four major operators come out. (You can also run a quick speed test to see how your connection compares and help feed the data pool to others).
Remember that coverage is only part of the equation. Signal strength, speed and latency are also very important. OpenSignal covers these bases if you tap on Network Stats and scroll through the results of a particular location, but you can also see things like PCMagthe annual coverage of the fastest mobile networks to get an idea of how speeds can vary from city to city.
If you really want to drill deeply, though, you’ll need to ask some good old-fashioned questions. See which operator your friends use, ask neighborhood groups on Facebook and see if your city or municipality has a dedicated subreddit with experiences you can mine. I’ve been to major cities in the United States, where my wife’s phone at one operator would have full signal strength, where my identical phone at another operator would float wildly around town – coverage maps and crowdsourcing tools won’t always be able to say things like this.
And remember, an operator’s coverage can change over time, so if someone says one is bad in that area, ask when you last used it. (My family is still married to Verizon based on AT&T’s poor rural coverage for a decade – although AT&T’s signal in northern Michigan has improved dramatically since then.) It can also be affected by the phone they use, so try looking for bigger trends. than focusing too much on a single opinion.
Look beyond the three major operators
If you haven’t boarded the MVNO train yet, it’s time to look beyond Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile and try out all the other big carriers out there. While most cell phone coverage in the U.S. uses these three networks, there are dozens of virtual mobile network operators – or MVNOs – that use the same towers, offering plans with cheaper or more exclusive pricing structures. You’ve heard their names before – Cricket Wireless, Republic Wireless, Ting, Straight Talk and others have been around for several years. But if you dismissed them as discount operators with bad services, you may be missing out.