Now it offers a few standard 30-day plans. Unlike Verizons cheapest unlimited on-phone data plan, called Start Unlimited, both of these include full-speed mobile hotspot and allow HD streaming video, albeit capped at 720p resolution on phones and 1080p on tablets. That meant dismissing the regional carrier U.S. Cellular and the resold services of cable firms such as Comcast and Spectrum, which require subscriptions to their residential broadband to get their advertised pricing or to sign up at all. Google Fi is the carrier to go to if you buy one of Google's phones like the Pixel 6a or Pixel 7. (You can't add extra lines of Value Plus, though, so families need to look elsewhere.). Magenta includes international roaming, and although thats limited to 128 Kbps speeds, Ive found it to be more than adequate for email and basic browsing. T-Mobile also has a history of data breaches, with its most recent and largest happening in August and affecting some 40 million customers. Boost-owner Dish plans to move into postpaid plans this year through the Dish Wireless service. Data allotments on older plans may vary. Information current as of March 21, 2022. That's ideal for families. The good news is that Mint is aggressive with pricing promotions. We also didnt include the value of such media tie-in deals as T-Mobile adding a free Netflix subscription with two or more lines on an account, AT&T throwing in the $15 HBO Max service on its $85 Unlimited Elite plan, and Verizon including Apple Music or a bundle of Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ on some of its unlimited plans. T-Mobile has announced plans to acquire Mint Mobile and its parent company Kaena Corporation in a deal valued at approximately $1.3 billion, with an expectation that the deal will close at the end of 2023. Focusing on the good stuff, mid-band 5G, which works and feels better than 4G, in. Read our buying guide to learn more before you shop. This year, T-Mobile plans to work with SpaceX to use satellites to extend coverage to areas where cellular networks can't reach. Powers purchase-experience studies. You will have to decide if your likely travel patterns are more apt to make this an ongoing problem. AT&T, now the third-largest carrier, offers a strong GSM network thats yet to get 5G service to match. T-Mobiles prepaid brand offers the cheapest service for four lines plus access to the networks strong 5G speeds. Once youve determined which network will work best for you, the next step is to figure out how much data you actually usewhich may be much more than you expected if you havent checked that detail in months. Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. (I was among them. We pick the best phone carriers based on data speeds, phone selection, monthly costs and more. (And if you buy a recent iPhone or 5G-ready Android phone through the carrier, you can enjoy 5G coverage.) An early upgrade program lets you switch to a new device after you've paid off 50% of your phone. 5G connectivity and the Snapdragon 865 processor mean seniors won't worry about sluggish performance. PCMag takes a similar approach but focuses more specifically on network data speed and reliability. Best cheap cell phone plan: Mint Mobile Best option for coverage: Verizon Best unlimited plan on a budget: Visible Best prepaid value: AT&T Identifying the best cell phone plans isn't. The difference has become increasingly obvious in third-party tests, as well as in our own evaluations of Wi-Fi hotspots from the big three carriers. Shop for cell phone carriers at Best Buy. It offered incredible speeds, but . Of that total, 265 million can access its faster Ultra Capacity 5G service; T-Mobile says it's targeting 300 million at some point this year. The main selling points for MVNO cell phone carriers when they first hit the market is that they were low-cost alternatives to the major carriers and primarily revolved around no-contract prepaid plans. The best phone carriers overall (Image credit: Verizon) 1. And TracFone doesnt help its cause by prohibiting mobile-hotspot use on all plans except a $40, 8 GB option. You'll find a good selection of phones at Xfinity, including the latest iPhone and Android flagships, such as the iPhone 14 and Galaxy S22. Mints unlimited plan deserves extra contemplation because it includes similar usage limits to other unlimited plans: a priority-data cap, 35 GB, a 5 GB cap on mobile-hotspot usage, and a 480p streaming-video limit. Both unlimited data plans slow your speeds after you use 35GB of data in a month. Youll then need to take an educated guess at how far that number could rise in a year, then see which plans will cover that with a reasonable margin. Recently Tested BEST TIME TO BUY: Learn more Visible Spectrum Mobile Mint Mobile Google Fi AT&T Verizon Wireless T-Mobile Boost Mobile TracFone Straight Talk MetroPCS Cricket See All Ratings You. Now? Specifically, Metro's most expensive unlimited data plan includes 20GB of hotspot data and 100GB of Google One storage. Mint Mobile | T-Mobile network | 3-12 month contract | 4 - 15GB data | $15 - $25 per month. For subscribers on its cheaper, limited-data plans, AT&T also offers business and academic discounts, plus a unique 15% discount for union members. While Metro traffic can slow down when T-Mobile's towers get congested, in our testing, that's been a rare occurrence. Despite the recent shift from four national carriers to three, and the transitions from 3G networks to 4G and now 5G, prices have gone down while data allocations have gone up, especially among the dozens of smaller carriers reselling services from the big three. Cheapest unlimited plan: Mint Mobile 2. But unlike Mint, Cricket only includes mobile hotspot use on its most expensive offering (although the allocation there is a fairly generous 15 GB). He's been covering personal technology since 1999 and was in the building when Steve Jobs showed off the iPhone for the first time. Buying your phone on AT&Ts installment plan brings an extra risk: Until youve paid off the phone, the device will be locked and stuck with international-roaming charges of $10 a day in most countriesand unavailable to use with a different service if you want to leave AT&T early. If you havent looked at how your current bill compares with what it might be under a new plan or on a new service, you should check now. Best 5G carrier overall: Verizon. Determine data usage As a rule of thumb, more data equals higher bills, so work out how much you use per month. To try to get the most balanced picture possible of the big three carriers (and the services that resell their networks), we consulted independently conducted surveys of wireless network coverage and performance from Opensignal, PCMag and RootMetrics. The simple design, high-quality results, free cloud storage, and $0 price make Adobe Scan an excellent choice. But here's how the rest of the Big 4 national carriers stack up, according to the latest OpenSignal report: T-Mobile ties with Verizon for fastest speed, but suffers in coverage; AT&T gives both Verizon and T-Mobile a run for it when it comes to actual nationwide availability and comes close behind T-Mobile for speed; And Sprint brings up the . Meanwhile, Delta SkyMiles members now get free Wi-Fi on U.S. domestic flights thanks to T-Mobile even if you get your wireless service elsewhere. The $70 Start Unlimited plan not only bans HD video streaming and mobile hotspot use, it may throttle your speeds in times of congestion, even at the start of a billing cycle before youve burned up any data yourself. To us, that doesnt justify the relatively modest savings some of its plans offer. Rootmetrics continues to give T-Mobile the nod as the carrier with the fastest and most available 5G coverage. Meanwhile, services keep trying to make themselves harder to leave in various ways beyond installment payment plans; for example, the aggressive discounts on the iPhone 13 from the big three all took the form of two-year or even three-year installment payments zeroed out, except that subscribers who leave early have to pay back the remaining price without that discount. Both now include C-band and mmWave 5G and allot 50 GB of priority data and 25 GB of mobile hotspot, as well as streaming-video limits of 720p on LTE and low-band 5G, plus 4K UHD video on C-band or mmWave 5G. Finding one that offers the best cell phone plans is a good start, and you should always consider network coverage including how strong a carrier's 5G network is in your area. If the lowest possible bill on a good-enough network is your top priority, we recommend Mint Mobile, a newer reseller of T-Mobiles LTE and 5G network. (The 3GB plan for $30/month is the more generous option.) Consumer Cellular offers tailored cell phone plans for seniors that start as low as $15 a month. Sascha Segan, Fastest Mobile Networks 2020, PCMag, September 9, 2020, Ben Gottesman, Readers Choice Awards 2020: Smartphones, Carriers, and Mobile Operating Systems, PCMag, March 24, 2020, Sue Marek, USA Mobile Network Experience Report January 2020, Opensignal, December 31, 2020, Ian Fogg, USA 5G User Experience Report June 2020, Opensignal, June 30, 2020, Sue Marek, USA Mobile Network Experience Report July 2020, Opensignal, July 13, 2020, Dave Andersen, Review of the US Mobile Landscape 1H 2019: carrier performance at national, state, and metro levels, RootMetrics, July 15, 2019, Dave Andersen, US State of the Mobile Union: carrier performance at national, state, and metro levels 2H 2019, RootMetrics, January 27, 2020, Wireless Carrier Investments in Self-Service Tools Drive Satisfaction and Revenue in Customer Care, J.D. T-Mobile began rolling out its own standalone 5G in 2020. Once owned and operated by Sprint, Boost Mobile is now the property of Dish in a $1.4 billion purchase spurred by the Sprint-T-Mobile merger. In either case you get unlimited data, whether you pick the$30 Visible or the $45 Visible Plus options. Metro customers with 5G-capable phones can enjoy T-Mobile's 5G coverage, which now stretches coast to coast. But that's adjusted to the precise amount of data you consume if you use 2.5GB, say, you'll pay $25 instead of Google rounding up to $30. Finally, we make a note of the different perks that are available through each carrier, whether it's plan add-ons like streaming services and hotspot data, regular giveaways or the ability to use data when traveling in other countries. As with other carriers, Consumer Cellulars unlimited plan does have limits: After you use 50 GB combined between the lines, the service warns that your access to high speed data will be reduced, and you may experience slower speeds.. Boost Mobile: Best phone carrier for one person AT&T & T-Mobile wireless network coverage Unlimited mins Unlimited texts 5GB 4G/5G Data $15 /mo View Plan 4.5 Pros Nationwide coverage on AT&T & T-Mobile 5G & 4G LTE data speeds Buy online and no credit checks Bring your own phone Cheapest unlimited data plan Cons No data only plans Privacy-conscious shoppers should know that AT&T keeps cell-site location data much longer than the other carriers: at most five years, according to an AT&T spokesperson (who called the figure of seven years included in an FBI presentation reported by Vice old and incorrect and said some cell-site history gets flushed after 13 months), versus one at Verizon and two at T-Mobile. You can buy another 5 GB of hotspot data for $15or you could save $5 by trading down to the 15 GB plan, which lets you use all of that data for mobile hotspot and has no streaming-video resolution constraint. If your usage only slightly exceeds the cap on a services limited-data planssay you use 3.25 GB in a month and your carrier offers a 3 GB planyou should see if that plan lets you roll over unused data from months when you dont hit your maximum. A T-Mobile spokesperson confirmed that policy, saying that although the service for postpaid plans and prepaid plans have the same priority, Metro by T-Mobile and other resellers may notice slower speeds in times of network congestion. Aron North, chief marketing officer at Mints then-parent firm Ultra Mobile, confirmed in an email in 2019 that at times where there is network congestion Mint may be reprioritized. That remained in effect in 2020. Cell Phone Service Ratings. Xfinity's best plan for individuals is its $45 unlimited plan. I thought about dropping T-Mobile, but the telecom industrys general indifference to the concept of data minimization left me with little reason to think Id fare that much better in the long run elsewhere.). Youre okay with potentially being on your own if you have to work through service hiccups or tech-support travails. T-Mobiles plans to acquire prepaid provider Mint Mobile, Best for the most data: T-Mobile Magenta/Magenta Max, Multiple-line plans: Metro or Consumer Cellular, How to determine which network has the best coverage for you. The nipping is over . The $75/month Unlimited Extra and $65/month Unlimited Starter plan round out the main offerings, with fewer perks than what Premium users enjoy. That way, your options include not only the major carriers but some of the top MVNOs competing for your business with cheaper plans. Visible offers a choice of plans, neither of which will put a dent in your budget. (MVNO customers can expect speeds similar to that of their parent network, with the caveat that an MVNO's speeds might be slowed down if a network is congested.). Subscribers who pay up for Visible Plus get 50GB of premium data before they see any slowdowns. The best cell phone plans for seniors at a glance 1. You can get hotspot switched on via its phone support or, as I did with a family members phone, in its customer service chat online. Mint Mobile Affordable coverage with plenty of high-speed data Best for: Low-cost 5G data Price per month: From $15/month Money-back guarantee: Seven days Uptime: 100% Mint Mobile is an MVNO that piggybacks on T-Mobile cell towers. One other thing to consider when picking carriers is perks that come included with a monthly streaming service subscription. And iPhone owners can try out Visible for free for 15 days using their own device. Why you can trust Tom's Guide And Opensignals 5G-specific tests, also released in January, show an even bigger advantage for T-Mobile: average 5G download speeds of 150 Mbps, far above the 56.2 Mbps and 49.1 Mbps download averages at Verizon and AT&T. As of this writing, the carrier still offers three months of service for free when you sign up for a three-month plan, though that's a limited-time promo. T-Mobile. In addition to high-speed 5G coverage (where available), you get a bundle of Disney streaming services (Disney Plus, ad-supported Hulu and ESPN Plus) as well as a subscription to a streaming gaming service either Apple Arcade or Google Play Pass. The CDMA foundation of Verizons networkand Verizons decision to launch its 5G service on mmWave frequencies that go unused in many other marketscan limit the compatibility of some unlocked phones. 1. We independently review everything we recommend. Last year we noted that OnePlus's ratings, "while quite good, are all down from [2020's] scores, and Apple, Google, and Samsung continue to nip at OnePlus's heels.". You may find even lower prices from temporary promotions at Amazon and Best Buy, according to Mint customers on Reddits r/mintmobile subreddit. If youre on a budget and dont mind complications such as expensive international roaming and a lack of in-person support, Mints 4 GB, 10 GB and 15 GB plans offer even more substantial savings. T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert said in a YouTube video announcing the acquisition that Mint would continue to offer a $15 monthly plan. You're not spoiled for choice at Visible, as the Verizon-owned discount carrier offers just two plans, both of which offer unlimited data. Pixel devices are optimized for Google's wireless network, allowing them to seamlessly switch between the carriers that provide Google Fi's coverage T-Mobile and US Cellular at this point so you'll always have the best connection available. Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra. All the data allotment in the world isnt helpful if the connection is too slow to use, but T-Mobiles network has jumped ahead, in part because of its 5G frequencies. 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