Verizon is still ranked number one for coverage in the US, but it’s becoming very expensive. We pay about $220 a month for 4 phones, one of which isn’t even “smart”.
The rest of my family is going to stay with Verizon for now, but I’m in the process of jumping ship. I bought the new Google Nexus 4 phone, unlocked, for $350 direct from Google. That may seem expensive when you are used to buying subsidized phones directly from the wireless company, but for an unlocked phone it’s very cheap. Verizon would sell an equivalent phone without a contract for $600 or more, and at least $250 with a 2-year contract.
The best part is that I got a month-to-month no-contract connection with T-Mobile for just $30/month. That includes unlimited data and text, and 100 minutes of voice.
On the potential downside, the phone doesn’t support LTE, the latest high speed data connection. But it does support “HSPA+“, an enhanced 3G service that is supposed to be pretty fast. I temporarily have both phones, so I did some comparisons using SpeedTest at a few locations around town. Here are the results:
Surprisingly, in most of the locations around the East Valley (Tempe, Chandler, Mesa, Gilbert) T-Mobile download was faster than Verizon. Uploads were all slower on T-Mobile, but that is much less of a concern for me.
A couple of years ago when I bought my Verizon Thunderbolt, it was the first Verizon LTE phone on the market, and the LTE bandwidth was all available for a few users. At that time I was regularly getting 20 MB/S download speeds. But (I assume) as more and more people are using LTE, it is getting crowded and therefore slower.
Tomorrow I’m taking a trip half-way to Payson, so I’ll see how coverage is outside the metropolitan area. I assume that Verizon will be better, but that’s what I assumed for the local speed test, so I’ll wait and see. I also haven’t done much voice quality testing since I haven’t ported my number over yet. Funny how the most important thing to me about my phone is not using it as a phone.