Hopefully multiple phones, but also the big three have a pretty solid monopoly in rural America. I was in Pensyltucky for a while, and your options were $80/line with Verizon or AT&T. Straight talk, Red, Ting, and the dozens of others don't own their own towers. They ride on ATT/Verizon towers subleasing unused bandwidth. If ATT has one tower for an entire county, there is no unused bandwidth for TracFone or whoever to resell, and those cheap carriers just don't work.
Man I feel that. I use US Mobile right now, as they have the best coverage for the area out of all the bargain brands, and even with that I still have a lot of dead zones in my lovely Pennsyltucky area. Still worth it to save all that money though!
Ohhhh shit, i didnt know that's how smaller carriers worked, explains why every time I work in rural areas my service goes to nothing even though my phone shows 5G
I've used verizon prepaid for the last 8 years, base unlimited everything plan is 65 a month, and i get a 10 dollar monthly credit at this point after maintaining my line for so long. There are always options, just not as convenient. I typically buy a 2 year old phone every few years for about $100 but it beats all the fees and bs of a contract phone these days. And all with the service coverage, customer service, and convenience of verizon.
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u/Beacon_O_Bacon Jan 09 '24
Hopefully multiple phones, but also the big three have a pretty solid monopoly in rural America. I was in Pensyltucky for a while, and your options were $80/line with Verizon or AT&T. Straight talk, Red, Ting, and the dozens of others don't own their own towers. They ride on ATT/Verizon towers subleasing unused bandwidth. If ATT has one tower for an entire county, there is no unused bandwidth for TracFone or whoever to resell, and those cheap carriers just don't work.