I live in the suburbs of a second-string city. In (and more importantly between) the suburbs and exurbs, prepaid and MVNO coverage is Swiss cheese at best. My

I live in the suburbs of a second-string city. In (and more importantly between) the suburbs and exurbs, prepaid and MVNO coverage is Swiss cheese at best. My primary use case for cellular data is navigation, which is most important precisely where MVNOs and T-Mobile Prepaid are entirely dark. My first phone was T-Mobile prepaid and while their customer service was friendly, their network was not within an order of magnitude of useful if you got any further from downtown than my house. This might be a good strategy for someone who never leaves a major metropolitan area though. EDIT: Also I have Verizon, which is rock solid in this market. Since I ditched prepaid, I've never been without cell coverage except inside of very dense buildings.