So Iphone 5 is coming shortly, you think this is the time to ditch your carrier and jump ship. You are tired of dropped calls and huge charges. But which carrier should you go for Verizon, Sprint or At &T? This is an important decision as you will be stuck with it for the next two years, could cost you hundreds of dollars if you get it wrong and have to cancel your contract.
Here is the skinny of what you need to know.
The major criteria for choosing a a plan is the cost and the quality of the service. You want the cheapest option but that has decent service too. Others are moved by other facts such as international roaming charges, compatibility with other devices ( for those of us who have ipads, Ipods and Macs).
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1.First find out which service is best for the place that you live. Have you ever seen phones which lose signal in your home while others dont ? Find out more from friends and relatives when they cum for dinner, about the carriers that don’t lose signal. The same case for your office . Your reception signal in the places you spend most of your time should be a clear and important consideration.
There are also online sites which have searchable and zoomable maps that show how strong the signal is in a certain neighborhood. For example OpenSignal maps cellreception.com are two of the major ones.
All the carriers have their own searchable maps. However I would trust non carrier claims to those of the carriers.
With Iphone 5 – you will have the ability to connect to the faster 4g LTE networks. So which carrier is best suited for the faster speeds? Various carriers are in various levels of development in regards to 4g LTE. In addition, we don’t as yet know how the 4g LTE will perform when million of people start watching youtube videos and doing other data intensive tasks on their smart phones.
2. How much data do you need per month?
The first step is to know how much data you and others who may be sharing in your plan use? How many megabytes of data do you use? There has been an effort to end the unlimited data plans- so its important to know just how much data you need per month.
3. After deciding on which data plan best suites you, then you need to decide which carrier will provide it for the lowest price. Apple has a tool in its website where you can compare different data plans for the three carriers. Just so you know, with Verizon you have to get into shared plans, At & T also does the same but also has an individual ( for those who signed up long time ago not new users) , Sprint has unlimited for all users.
So lets recoup- first you look at which carrier has the best signal in the place where you spend most of your time, you then decide what your usage needs are , and then decide which carrier has that for a low price. If you are data hog, the Sprint unlimited plan may be for you. Verizon sharing plan is for those who share but don’t use as much data. At & T also has some great plans for those who use low amount of data.
4. Un-schackle yourself
There is a also a possibility of using an unlocked iphone ( you have to pay full price – about $649 for 16gb Iphone 5, ( or find even lower prices for Iphone at Walmart and or at Amazon ) and not the subsidized prices that come with contracts ($199 for the same Iphone 5)) and then you can sign up for prepaid carriers such as Cricket . Hundreds of people are doing so and saving hundreds of dollars a year. However you can get cheap plans as low as $35 plans ( such as on Cricket with unlimited text and data) and that is where you will get your savings.
Conclusion
So as you can see there is some footwork to be done, and some choices made about quality of the signal to choice of carrier that has cheaper data plans, or simply whether to go the independent route without being shackled by contracts. If you make some good choices you will enjoy some savings of hundreds of dollars a year, and your signal will be stronger when you are in your primary domain.
