Best Mobile Carrier for Full Timers

[SpaceNorman]

I've become a bit of a Verizon fanboy these days. This past summer we travelled extensively throughout Michigan's Lower Peninsula - with our personal cell phones provisioned on the Sprint network - and a company issued Jetpack provisioned on the Verizon network. There's no comparison in terms of coverage between the two. We seemed to have 3-4-5 bars of Verizon service on the Verizon Jetpack everywhere we went - while our cell phones only teased us with "1x" service on the Sprint network.

 

My use of the company issued Jetpack was just a "pilot", which means I had to take care of providing my cellular service (if I wanted to work from my coach for extended periods of time). So, we've since moved everything - our personal cell phones as well as my cellular router - to Verizon.

 

I really like their new approach to pricing. No more contracts ... and no more being stuck with a data plan that you've likely had to "oversize" in order to avoid paying overage charges and end up leaving data to go unused every month. Under their new pricing approach - you can change your data plan (increasing or decreasing it) as necessary - and make those changes retroactive to the start of the billing cycle. These days - I simply look at my usage in the week leading up to the 20th of the month (the day my billing cycle ends). If I've got a ton of unused data - I downsize my plan. If I'm over my current plan - I upsize it to ensure I'm covered. In the end - I end up paying roughly $5.50 per gigabyte of data used. My "monthly" plan has ranged from their "Large - 6GB" plan (basically cell phone only) - all the way up to their 20 GB plan ... and back down again (since the coach is in storage at the moment).

 

With unlimited data plans going the way of the dodo (except with a few of the smaller carriers with a very limited coverage footprint) - the new Verizon approach to pricing is OK in my book.

[HSVBamaBob]

X2 on what Cherie & Chris said! Another advantage we discovered with Verizon I discovered as I was planning our Al-Can highway trip is a "Canadian plan" that, for an additional $2/day let's you use your existing voice & data minutes while visiting Canada. What s really cool about this is you can turn it on and off on a daily basis! We crossed over to Ontario last month and needed cell service for the 1 day we visited. Paid the $2 for my iPhone and used it as a hot-spot for the iPads with no problems at all!

[Dutch_12078]

With the advent of Verizon's easily adjusted data plan, I'm starting to run the numbers to see how using the $50/mo Karma unlimited plan in those areas with good Sprint coverage, and Verizon in the other areas, would work out cost wise. Without a specific travel plan to go by, of course it's pretty much guess work. I think there may be an opportunity for some significant savings there though, particularly if we hold off on the high usage downloads and uploads until we're using Karma when practical. We can live with Karma's 5GB max speed limit.