Road Trip Coverage...

John Kotches

SatelliteGuys Master
Original poster
Supporting Founder
Nov 21, 2003
6,765
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Troy, IL (STL Area)
I just got back from a road trip that was pretty awesome and very spontaneous to South Dakota, all over the state.

My personal carrier is Sprint and my work carrier is ATT.

There were large swaths of South Dakota where sprint was on roaming where ATT was on 3g or hspa+ (pseudo 4g). I was quite surprised to see how little Sprint covered.

This isn't meant to bash one or praise the other, just my observations while they are fresh in my mind.

Oh, and loved the area. Amazing natural wonders :)

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I could have told you that Sprint coverage map is full of you know what. They suck. They have spots on the interstates that aren't even covered. That is just plain unheard of from the other companies.
 
Sprint seems to have the spottiest coverage. When we moved from the metroplex to the country last year we had Sprint and we noticed real quick how spotty the coverage was. The signal at the house we moved to was so faint or non-existent that we were able to talk Sprint into getting us out of our contract with no ETF when we switched to Verizon. Verizon seems to have the best coverage here.
 
until sprint upgrades their towers that will not change. they're the cheapest for a reason. i've been with them for a very long time because their coverage is great in my area. with LTE to launch in october i'm set. the day they become as expensive as the rest i will go back to verizon.
 
Sprint has always had the worst coverage.
 
where i live and where i usually travel coverage is never an issue for me with Sprint. This wasn't meant to rag on Sprint - just sone observations. Usually in remote areas I'll have one or the other ATT or sprint. in the times I've been in rural IL I've had better coverage with Sprint.

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...because their coverage is great in my area.
That's normally how people clarify why they use (insert any carrier here) and admittedly, for 90% of the time, it's perfectly fine ! It's only when people travel outside their normal area do they find out how good their carrier's coverage is.

I may have posted this before, but my brother-in-law is an engineer with one of the larger cell tower companies (they build, maintain, etc towers that the carriers are moving towards leasing space on more and more) and, in his opinion, states that Verizon has the best coverage across the US.
 
Just to expound on previous posts, you really learn about the providers' coverage when you get out of the populated areas and travel.

I full-time RV and travel most of the country. If you're in a populated area, it pretty much doesn't make any difference who your carrier is. However, once you get out of the cities and off the interstates, coverage really suffers with some carriers.

I've had pretty good luck with AT&T in rural areas. A few times I had a good AT&T signal and little or no Verizon signal. Overall though, Verizon is the most reliable for voice and data, even in remote areas.

Still, there are dead areas in the West where you won't get any kind of cellular signal.

Sprint has service for probably 90% of the population. Their numbers are not nearly that good when you look at geographics though.
 

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