Intel Corp (INTC)

[mmoy]

I think that all of the carriers provide good service in my area but I've been to parts of the country where T-Mobile and Sprint have had better service than AT&T and Verizon. Verizon has the best coverage in my area but the speed is poor locally (their 3G is 1/10th the speed of the other carriers). 98% of the time coverage would be fine - it's that 2% that can be a problem.

I am considering getting a high-end flip-phone from Verizon and going on the $10/month plan and getting a new iPad Air 3 (when they come out) and going with Google Fi ($10/GB and you only pay for what you use) that works off T-Mobile. The nice thing about the iPad Air 2 and 3 and iPad Mini 4 is that you can easily change carriers so I could just switch to Verizon or AT&T if I were in an area where T-Mobile doesn't have good coverage for a week or two. The tablet approach to data also gives you Hotspot which the carriers usually charge you $10 for.

Ideally you could do this with a phone but the carriers know that you want the convenience of doing everything in the phone and they force you to pay $20-$30/month for Voice/Text and then data on top of that. I typically use 50 MB of data per month and I make few phone calls and do few text messages.