When I got to rural Missouri, I had Sprint as I'd worked for them for decades. I could deal with lousy coverage around the area, but not at my home. Switched to ATT. Coverage at the house was a little better, but not significantly. And still lousy around the area. Switched again to Verizon and it's great! Coverage at home is consistent, and only one identified dead zone in the area. No landline available to the house, so it's important to have consistency on the cell. Now that fiber internet to the house has come through, I could add that for a home phone, but it only works if the internet is working. So not spending that $$.

We have always had Verizon and it works well for us. The thing I would be most concerned about is if whatever company worked at my home and second is if it worked at most places I would go most often.

My last and very least concern would be cost.

I have had Consumer Cellular for at least a couple of years now. I had a very hard time getting away from Verizon. They were just horrible. But they were costing me about $100 a month when I quit. I am paying $55 now and it could be less if I didn't have unlimited.

If devices can receive an adequate Wifi signal throughout your house, your phone will too and it will work on the reliable, strong signal. Even if your carrier's signal is weak or unreliable in your home, calls will bypass it.

Is this an admission, 5 years after the fact, that you don’t have to switch phone settings when you come home in order to override a weaker tower signal? We argued at length about this.

Food: Don't start nothin' won't be nothin'..... or, if you just can't stop yourself -- take it offline.

Mix of responses between the "big 3" on this thread. Decisions, decisions...

Sure, but I think the quality of responses are going to be limited wirhout knowing your usage and motivation to switch. Coverage is a local issue. Perhaps data speed, too. When I looked up my county AI told me Verizon had the best coverage, T Mobile the fastest data, and ATT the most complaints. Or something like that. If your primary use is voice calls, and your primary motivation cost, you’re going to get a different answer than someone looking for fastest internet speed.

"...I think the quality of responses are going to be limited wirhout knowing your usage and motivation to switch."

My reason for switching is I'm PO'd at the poor customer I've received for a couple of very simple account issues. I really don't want to get into the details about it on this thread.

As best as I can recall, over the years most of my issues with Verizon have been with service, not customer service.

I think this is comparing apples and oranges. Nothing is the same w

everywhere. You can only compare with people in your exact area.

" Is this an admission....., "

I'm happy to go along with porkchop's suggestion.

Food, you seem exercised about something. I'm happy to converse with you in a new thread, by exchange of messages or emails (send me your address in a private message), or not at all. Your choice, let me know.

Agreed. If there’s an active local reddit that would be a good place to look, or post.

Clark Howard, in case you've never heard of him, he shares unbiased advice helping people save money or get better service...recommends Tello. We had At&T & had to go outdoors to get a signal. No signal if we went into the mountains or a hilly area. We switched to Tello, and get a signal hiking remote areas...and saved money. $9 + $2 tax =$11 a month.

Nicole, Tello customers connect to T-Mobile's system, according to info from a search I just did. Its unlimited plan described on its site rises to $25/month after 6 months. That's a price available from others.

I had both ATT and Verizon. (2 cell phones, one personal, one for work) for about 10 years. When work stopped providing a cell phone I stayed with Verizon as my provider. I had far fewer dead zones with Verizon than I did with ATT at that time.

Currently both ATT and Verizon have comparable service in my home town, but my sister changed from ATT to Verizon when both of her daughters moved to new home and both had issues with dead zones in/around their home with ATT.

Last year my company excluded WiFi on the home internet service they provided to employees. I wanted WiFi so I got Verizon Fios as a personal internet service. It took me a while to figure out, but people kept telling me that they were calling me and the calls were going straight to VM. I would look at the incoming call logs and nothing showed. If they left a VM it would show as a VM but still no incoming call. Verizon tried all kinds of fixes and it kept happening. I turned off WiFi calling and all my calls are coming through without fail. Now I have to figure out why WiFi calling causes the issue when it should be a much higher quality WiFi than what my work was providing.

" Last year my company excluded WiFi on the home internet service they provided to employees. I wanted WiFi "

If a location's router doesn't have Wifi functionality, it can be easily adapted to add the Wifi capability by buying what's called a "Wifi Access Point" or using a second router device, with the router functionality turned off, set to Bridge or Wifi Access mode. Either device gets connected to the router with an ethernet cable.

I thought you'd been an IT manager? This is basic stuff.

Jennifer - A query on chatgpt suggests what you’re experiencing with wifi calling is very common. Bunch of things to check and try, too long to copy/paate here.

Are tiu loving Fios for internet? My mom’s got it snd its SO mucy faster than anything or anywhere else.

food, you probably know that what's called "speed" for an internet connection is really bandwidth. Capacity. Think of a 2 lane road with a 50mph speed limit. If you want to double the throughput, you add two more lanes while keeping the speed at 50Mbps. The signals travel at top speed no matter how wide the roadway is, but how much it can carry at a time is limited by the number of "lanes".

Few households need as much capacity as their internet connections may offer. I have 400Mbs through cable companies, that's their base level. With most modern cable services, the signals travel over fiber optic (they don't advertise that) to each neighborhood. From the neighborhood node to the household drop is coax cable. Coax cable for households in areas with newish (not oldish) cable equipment can usually carry bandwidth well in excess of what any household node would use. On Super Bowl Sunday, maybe max bandwidth is compromised because everyone is watching TV.

I download podcasts to my PC (it suits my usage pattern) and the download rate is noted. Even with 400Mbps capacity, it rarely exceeds 75. Ditto for info coming from your average website - they don't serve up at higher rates because they don't have to and some connections can't handle it. Older modems and routers can also compromise throughput rates.

It's true that a 100% fiber connection reacts more quickly (lower latency) but the speed of a download is more a function of the source than the connection. Unless one has a very low bandwidth connection or is living in a household with 10 simultaneous gamers or HiRes TV watchers, the actual capability is rarely a factor.

No need to get technical here, when I refer to speed I’m talking about the speed at which web pages and such appear, fully loaded, on my screen. The differences between my moms home and mine are notable and consistent.

You are describing latency, which is responsiveness. Not the phenomenon most people misconstrue to be "speed". If you run a speed test on the connection, the latency is described with the label "Ping". A lower number, measured in milliseconds(ms), means more responsiveness, a quicker connection to reply. Not faster download speed. The latency is affected by many different factors, but in general, a fiber optic connection has less.

Elmer,

Maybe we don't share the same ethics. I signed an attestation that I read, understood and agreed to follow the company policy for use of the company provided internet service.

Once I agreed that I would not do something I was bound by my word.

ATT here, one simple flip phone at $20/month, mainly used for travel and emergencies. Use Comcast for landline house phones at $10/month. Even though our ATT phone offers it we don't have a use for texting, emails via phone.

Interesting, vgkg. You're a rare animal these days. Most people wouldn't want to have to do without their smartphones.

What you have obviously works for you.

I had AT&T for decades and had no problems other than it was more expensive than others. Finally decided to switch to T-mobile and I will probably switch back soon. Texts to some people won't go through when they did with AT&T which is very frustrating. There are a few other things I am not crazy about, but blocking my texts when neither I nor the receiver have placed blocks is annoying.

“You're a rare animal these days. Most people wouldn't want to have to do without their smartphones.”

I was thinking about this the other day. A few months ago I put together a spreadsheet to consolidate some financial data. I used a laptop for that but aside from emailing it to myself, did not connect to the internet on this computer. The last time prior to that that I recall being on my laptop was doing my kids’ tax returns on turbotax. That required internet.

It’s probably safe to say that somewhere between 99.9 and 100.0% of everything other than streaming TV, is done on my phone. I can’t imagine I’m in the minority, though possibly for my age demographic.

@foodonastump - thank you for looking up my issue on the internet and sharing your finds.

It was a bit frustrating when none of the google solutions worked and Verizon tech support couldn't fix, but as soon as I put 2 and 2 together and associated that the problem started with getting Fios I found a solution.

I have not had much time through the holidays and EOY/BOY issues at work to figure out why Fios wifi isn't working as expected, probably an updated protocol that my older phone can't use. But as long as I am getting my calls I don't see a need to spend much time researching the answer.

I have had no other issues with Fios. I can do everything I need or want to do without any latency or delays. I would love to compare speed when pulling large data sets, but I only do that type of work at work, so I can't compare the two ISPs side by side.

Again, as long as what I have does what I need it to do, I don't tend to spend much time exploring alternatives.

Elmer is right - most people who are not big gamers don't need super high speed internet - in fact, the lowest service available is generally more than adequate.

I still use my phone as a phone more than anything else. I expect this will change after retirement. I get several hundred e-mails and IMs each day at work - don't want to read more messages. I will answer phone calls from friends and family, enjoy looking at pictures that are sent, but sometimes take a day or two to even look at text messages.

I have several nieces and nephews who don't answer their phones - you have to send them a text if you want to communicate with them.

I have an older brother who doesn't text. He is in a nursing home and not at all tech savvy. Uses his cell as a phone. Doesn't remember not to call me when I am at work just to talk. Wants pictures mailed to him. Sends me envelopes stuffed with articles he read or the lunch menu or activities menu from the nursing home - just to share. Last envelope cost me $6.50 in postage due. He only uses 1 stamp to mail an envelope.

I do wish he would learn to send texts and send pictures via text, but I don't think he has the capacity to change at this stage of his life.

I've had a tracfone for years. It all started when I saw it on a special with hsn, it came with 1500 minutes talk, 1500 text msgs. and can't remember how many gigs for internet. I only use it for talking and text, very seldom for anything else. Once a year I will add to it before my plan expires and I'm good to go for another year with their unlimited plan. It averages around $12.00 to $15.00 a month.

" I can’t imagine I’m in the minority, "

food, I suspect you're not. I would describe my kids' habits as similar to yours, though all have jobs requiring at least some PC use. When I want to send them something in text form, it's usually a "print to PDF" version of a written file or the same of a webpage. Done on a PC. When they send me the same, it's either a photo taken by their phone of a piece of paper or a screen capture of their phone.

I use my smartphone a fair amount, I don't know if more or less than those in my age bracket (now a Social Security recipient). I suspect it's because of my career experiences that I use both the phone and my PC more than my friends seem to do. As far as I'm concerned, both tools offer capabilities that aren't possible at all to do otherwise or with the same ease.

I've never been able to read technical or complicated material on a phone screen. And some stuff, long items of many, many pages, the reading of which involves flipping back and forth between pages, I also can't easily read on a PC screen. In such cases, only printed copies work for me.

" I've had a tracfone for years "

I've had a second phone on the Tracfone service for about 10 years. I use it for one particular purpose. At one time, Tracfone (which doesn't have its own network) used multiple Big Boy networks that customers could choose from - I know Verizon and ATT were included, perhaps T-Mobile also. I started with an ATT one, and its replacement that I now use is Verizon. I'm indifferent which it is.

Verizon purchaed Tracfone several years ago. I don't know if it continues to offer connections to other carriers or not.

I pay $100 for 365 days of service, about $8.50 per month. Occasionally I have to top up data at $10 for 1-3 gigs, a token charge. And again, with the acquisition, whether Verizon will continue the affordable pricing for Tracphone connections remains to be seen.

food started a diversion thread on internet performance and it seems to have been deleted. I'd written a response to a comment he made and when I clicked on "Submit", Poof!. It was gone.

I deleted it.

Food, there are many reasons why speeds would change and will depend on how much traffic is on the network, what your priority level is based on your phone plan, and the level of the phones build. Phones have modems integrated on a chip that also rely on a number of factors, such as cores, clock speed of the processor, and RAM. Bandwidth matters, and for cable it will vary based on traffic since it's shared with the neighbors and some other reasons while Fiber can bottleneck at the router and narrow the bandwidth. For wireless signals to your phone bandwidth can shrink because of distance, interference and congestion. In all cases speed will vary.

Cheap phones, along with cheap routers may not process the data packets fast enough so will send a signal back to the server to slow down the data. A packet contains 1500 bits of information with about 30 bits used for information on how to unpack and what to do with the data. If it slows down, and your phone isn't a flagship phone, chances are the phone itself is regulating data download speed. In the case of a router for home networking it will do the same thing, but will work it's hardest to keep up and the demand and become hot when overloaded.

Any phone plan form a discount carrier will throttle down your download speed by default, so if you want fast data transmission you'd better pick a better carrier with a more expensive plan to get it. I have an ATT go phone plan, and had it for 25 years. My download speed is always less than 2 Mbps but I don't need anything faster so I have no need to pay extra to get faster speed.

Yep Elmer, we like to keep things simple and to me a smartphone would just make things more complicated, and expensive to boot, and all for what? If I need info via the web I'll use what I'm using to type this now, a pc at home. But then again, one size doesn't fit all, I just stopped growing but not growing old ;-).

The only reason I have a smartphone for personal use is because that's what I got for free when Sprint (now T-Mobile) upgraded to 5G, the old "dumb phone" I had was no longer supported. I don't use my phone for anything other than making a call, which is infrequently, or a text here and there, which, again, is fairly infrequent, although becoming more frequent due to it being the most expedient way to connect with the contractors I'm dealing with for the house. It's usually out of sight out of mind in my purse, I don't pay it much attention -- I really just don't care to be bothered. It's there if I need it and that's the extent of it. Just the other day someone called me on the phone to tell me something because they knew I probably wouldn't see the text LOL!

I have a smartphone that is provided through work. I do use that as a secure hotspot, video meetings, web purposes when I travel for work, which is frequently. In other words, I am paid to be bothered. LOL!

@Elmer J Fudd...The advantage to using Tello ....is exactly your point.....it doesn't own it's own fiber optic lines...it rents others. It can go anywhere without incurring installation costs. Most people MY age don't need unlimited internet access. $9 a month isn't offered by anyone else. Most unlimited plans have a minimum charge of $125 a month, a FAMILY plan. My age group...we're NOT paying for a FAMILY. I have a better connection than when we had AT&T. I think it's a far better option than any other carrier.

I have a perfectly good desktop I like, that works great for what I want. It replaced one I liked even better that Microsoft decided to not support.

Well, they decided to not support this one, to force me to buy another. IT IS NOT going to work. I am tired of replacing perfectly good things every seven to ten years and throwing them in the trash. (recycling IS throwing them in the trash!)

Apple did the same with the mini. Verizon did the same with the flip phone.

Porkchop, based on your limited usage it sounds like a cheap service like Tello or Tracphone would work for you. Here’s AI’s comparison between the two fwiw. If you’re happy with T Mobile’s coverage and customer service is a key consideration, I might lean towards Tello.

In my line of work one of the first things I need to determine is a use case.

Someone requests a new service and I need to determine what the use case is to figure out the optimal way to deliver.

Every person uses a cell phone differently. Some cannot live without their cell phone, do all their banking, shopping and communication through one device. Others may only use their cell phone for calling family members or some just for emergency calls when not at home (Car breaks down).

How you use your phone should be the first consideration when selecting a plan or carrier.

Will it provide you with a phone that works for you? How much are they charging for the plan that best fits your needs?

Add do you travel?

@ kevin9408 - Something I have learned as I work as the translator for our IT Developers, our executive leadership and end users is that the only ones who care about all the technical details or why something will or will not work are the IT Developers. Executives and End Users just want a solution for their problem. Tell me what I need to do to get what I need.

My wife has used tracphone for decades with no complaints and I've never had a problem with my ATT pay as you go plan in the 25 year I used it. I really don't see much difference between any cheap plan.

If you really just want to talk and text the cheapest plan is ZERO dollars a month . TEXTNOW has a plan for 0 dollars and you just buy a $5 dollar sims card for any unlocked phone. Their free phone plan uses AT&T's 5G network has Unlimited talk and text along with 1 gig a month for essential apps, like maps and emails. $5 is all you lose if you hate it.

Textnow.com

I DO NOT WANT any new. I do not game. I do not stream. I do not whatever. They can shove their ”upgrades up their A**. I shop. Nothing else. Even this can be dumped. No FB.

@Elmer J Fudd..$9! No one does cell service for $9! And it's BETTER cell service than a major brand..AT&T. Quote" Yes, Tello Mobile uses the T-Mobile network exclusively for coverage. As an MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator), Tello does not own its own network but relies entirely on T-Mobile’s infrastructure for 4G LTE and 5G service. " Clark Howard is in Georgia & formerly in Florida.

MVNO....is the correct term. I tried to simplify it. When speaking with friends, correct lingo goes out-the-door, even saying "Fudge!"..."thang" or "ain't" , ya-all, and your supposed to get-on-board with it. 📞🤠

Sherry, maybe consider getting a Chromebook. One might be suitable for your needs.

They're cheaper than regular PCs, run neither an Apple OS nor a Microsoft one, and are guaranteed to not be obsoleted for 10 years.

Do a search for Amazon Chrome Book and see what's there. You can get a nice one for less than $200. They have browsers you would be familiar with but some of the other apps are Chromebook versions that may differ a bit from what you're accustomed to. Many people have them for just the kind of internet use you describe.

Nicole, I pay $8.50/month for my second phone that I use for specific things. It's Tracfone's 12 months for $99 plan. Occasionally I need to top up data for $10, sometimes once, sometimes twice a year. I think it's one of the cheapest. And, for me, suitable because it's Verizon (whose coverage is usually rated tops for most locations in my state).

I know and intentionally left out the MVNO term. I understand fudge and thang. Whatchamacallit is another useful term too.

"I DO NOT WANT any new. I do not game. I do not stream. I do not whatever. They can shove their ”upgrades up their A**. I shop. Nothing else. Even this can be dumped. No FB."

HA! Yea, that's pretty much me. This chat board is the extent of my social media, and pretty much all I do on-line besides check email is shop and participate on this board.

On the local township Facebook page, there's been a discussion that Verizon removed a tower from part of the community and now many people are moaning about how their service has deteriorated. Whatever second-label name you decide to go with, make sure that the towers that they use cover your most frequent (home/work/school/etc) locations best.

AT&T has been good for us. Shop set up service also good. Friendly, responsive humans. Organized and quick.