3 ms·

Aren't AT&T, Verizon, etc, nation-wide operators?

• aestra 13y ago
  Yes, they are. HOWEVER: The USA is HUGE. It's not cost effective to put data where every inch of land is covered, ever slow data (EDGE). There's a ton of sparsely populated land, and rural areas. T-Mobile is a small operator and has the crappiest network coverage. It is 1000x better than it was 4 years ago, as they are adding more coverage, but it is expensive and slow. T-mobile is the worst for data coverage, and voice coverage. I had them for years, and I eventually dropped them for Verizon because I was finding myself without any cellphone service so often, because I travel often, and I find myself in rural areas. If I stayed in the city all the time it would work for me. That means no voice, no SMS, no data. Take a look at T-Mobile's 3G and 4G coverage map (and voice): http://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/pcc.aspx/ http://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/pcc.aspx/ Verizon: http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/support/coverage-locator http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/support/coverage-locator Sprint: http://coverage.sprint.com/IMPACT.jsp http://coverage.sprint.com/IMPACT.jsp AT&T: http://www.att.com/maps/wireless-coverage.html http://www.att.com/maps/wireless-coverage.html The other big issue is we have two standards here. GSM and CDMA. GSM is what T-Mobile and AT&T use, and CDMA is what Verizon and Sprint use. These can't play nice-nice with each other. Plus AT&T's 3G was different from T-Mobile's 3G so a AT&T 3G phone couldn't work with T-Moble's 3G signal and vice-visa. With 4G LTE, I believe this is a standard that both GSM and CDMA are "upgrading" to. I know that my CDMA phone needed a SIM card to work with the 4G LTE network (CDMA cards previously didn't require SIM cards).