Verizon Wireless by Far the Top

When it comes to cell phone coverage, everyone claims the offer the best coverage and service.  As someone multiple different services the only provider that can lay claim claim to the best coverage is Verizon Wireless.  Depending on where you live, this may be different.  My testing covered the state of California, from Los Angeles to Eureka I tested various devices with three of the major carriers and a few pre paid providers.



In every single area I traveled to, Verizon outperformed Sprint, AT&T, Metro PCS and Boost Mobile.  It was not even close.  Take a look at my video I posted of Sprint head to head against Verizon in Bakersfield to see the difference.

AT&T did perform better than Sprint, but nowhere close to Verizon.  AT&T and Sprint did both perform better in larger markets like Fresno and Los Angeles as well as parts of the bay area.  But Verizon consistently outperformed all of them.

Ironically Boost performed better than Sprint.  It seems illogical because Boost runs on Sprints network.  It may have been a device issue as some devices perform better on certain networks.  For example the iPhone seems to perform better on Sprint than Android phones.

Metro PCS was hit and miss depending on where I was as far as coverage.  If you live in a major market and rarely travel outside it, you will be fine with any provider.  But if you want something to rely on, Verizon is by far the way to go.

AT&T provides acceptable coverage.  For some reason AT&T seemed to really struggle inside buildings.  I found a lot of dead spots where I had no signal at all inside of some homes and buildings.  Then I would walk outside and have a strong signal.

Sprint receives a lot of criticism from me because they are constantly promising network updates in the "near future" in "your market".  They have even got Best Buy to sign off on this line of BS.  I have been promised this for well over a year from Sprint and I still see no change.

Sprint even sent out a text message to Bakersfield area customers claiming they will have completed upgrades by the end of February.  But as the month is about to end, I have only had coverage interruptions but no improvements.  During a recent call to customers service I was told a "millionaire" had recently purchased a portion of Sprint and he was pumping money into the struggling companies infrastructure to improve coverage.

Sprints struggle are largely because of a poor decision to support WIMAX technology the is inferior to the 4G technology everyone else went with.  After spending millions, Sprint decided to scrap WIMAX and go with 4G.  But they were way behind and short on cash to put the system in place.

The only advantage Sprint has is they are the only one left offering unlimited data plans.  But with the network they have in place it is difficult to see anyone using any significant amount of data anyway because it is to slow.

So there you have it, the good, the bad, and the truth about cellular providers.

I have access to a variety of devices on a variety of carriers and I will update this from time to time to reflect coverage in carriers and benefits or drawbacks of each.