For those of us who like to look at maps of various things, here is a first ever map from the FCC showing where broadband service is available across the United States. It's interactive and various layers can be shown for the major carriers. It's probably something you would only need once, but being geeky the way I am, I like searching maps.
WOW, that map sure explained a lot real fast!
My wife switched us to U.S. Cellular for only one term.
It worked in Knoxville, but not outside of Knoxville, and no where between here and St. Louis, and not in St. Louis either.
Our current carrier is not one shown on the map, but we know they use AT&T's towers and services.
But they have almost solid coverage everywhere!
The reason she switched from U.S. Cellular is because she had no signal when traveling to her son's home, nor locally when we went up to Grainger county for tomatoes.
We go out to Grainger and Jefferson county quite often, and that is why she got rid of U.S. Cellular.
The map I linked to is the official one published by the FCC. There are others. When we first landed in O'Fallon one of our top priorities was to find a local carrier. I was with Virgin Mobile and they claimed to have coverage here, but I couldn't get any verification of that fact and the signal was only marginal. T-Mobile was my next thought and they had one of those coverage maps on their web site. Our house was in the coverage zone, but it looked like we were on the fringe. Down at the end of the street was no T-Mobile. LOL Well everything worked out and over the years the coverage only got better. The only time we lose signal is along I-55 at some points when we travel to Chicago and back. There are some dead spots out in the rural areas of southern Illinois. Other than that I'm totally happy with T-Mobile.
yogi wrote: ↑08 Aug 2021, 12:33
You have a carrier named "Mobile Bandits?"
I'm not sure I would trust a company with a name like that. LOL
Neither would I, not that I knew they existed... Telcel, AT&T and Movistar own their coverage infrastructure, the rest rent the infrastructure form someone else. I use Telcel and AT&T prepaid services, mostly if I have no coverture in one, I have it on the other for most of the places I use to go. AT&T has better infrastructure and speed, but Telcel keeps the unused balance after expiration time.
I liked the prepaid cell service idea and that is all I used until I moved here to Missouri. Virgin Mobil was pretty reliable where I lived and their terms for payment suited my needs very well. Down here I had to get cable for television service, and while they provided everything else, Spectrum did not offer cell phone networking when I was looking for it. T-Moble became my cell phone carrier and we got a special discount plan (5G and all) because of our age. The cable company offers cell phone service now, but the price would be higher than T-Mobile. I no longer use prepaid phone service. That's probably a good thing since I currently have a smartphone and the savings with prepaid would not be realized as easily.
