Blogs
on May 25, 2020
Cell Tower Leaseholders who have had cell tower leases long enough understand the risks associated whenever news of possible wireless carrier mergers surface. Sprint's coverage will be hit or miss if you travel, however, if you're just going to the city for work and going back home to the suburbs, the service will stay consistent for the most part. That's more in line with unlimited plan pricing from Sprint's rivals — and Sprint's current unlimited plan doesn't even rank as the best unlimited data plan you can get right now.
While the carrier's maps may be 'optimistic' at times, using the carrier's maps is a great complement to also checking site-specific crowdsourced resources. Unlike AT&T and Verizon, Sprint is actually promising 5G coverage across specific locations. Just like T-Mobile there is only one coverage map for Verizon And, surprise it uses shades of red to determine what type of coverage is in an area.
I was led to believe that Sprint was a bigger company than T-Mobile, but it looks like they basically are the same sized company, at least as far as coverage goes. Sprint's coverage goal is more than 80 cities by the end of 2010, while the other carriers are lagging far behind with the implementation goal of 2012.
There's no question when it comes to speed and coverage (especially coverage): Verizon is the best wireless choice you can make. Sprint is one of the only 4 major sprint phone deals (page) cell service providers. It's a significant drop off from Verizon's 70% 4G service coverage to T-Mobile's 62% coverage1—but that's not how the users see it.
Eventually both networks will be integrated and for you to enjoy the full 5G capabilities of the whole network, you will need a compatible 5G device which may be different than your current phone. Then you may want to stick with AT&T or T-Mobile. This has saved me lots of money in the long run because a plan I used to have with the other carriers allows me to downgrade due to the extra minutes thus saving me money.
Even though Sprint is at hard work trying to improve the LTE speeds and call clarity, there're instances at certain times and certain places where this does not happen due to natural or man made obstructions. Monthly service can be $59.99 to $99.99 depending on data speeds.
Verizon has a tool that lets you know whether your cell phone will work in Canada and what price you'll be paying to do so. It will likely cost a bit more each day to use your Verizon phone in Canada. Even if the regional carrier has nationwide coverage through roaming agreements, if you're utilizing the service primarily outside its home region, you can find yourself running into all sorts of restrictions and limitations.
In other words, Verizon (and other wireless carriers) can generate coverage maps to show whatever they want to show. T-Mobile refers to band 12 LTE as 'Extended-range LTE' as it has better signal propagation characteristics than its PCS and AWS-based frequencies.