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Comment by unshavedyak | Hacker News Reader

For MVNO on Verizon's network, any recommendations? I pay some absurd number for my Verizon plan in the Pacific Northwest because the mountains cause other providers (TMo, for example) to have no reception constantly. Verizon is basically the only choice. However i rarely use it, i spend 90% of the time on Wifi. I just want to be able to get texting/voice SMS/Phone/Data for emergencies (not just 911). So perhaps an MVNO is of interest to me?

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Check if your phone has Band 71 support for good long range communication to the tower with T-Mobile. It's 600 MHz and has excellent penetration through trees. I got 7 mbps up and down through SIX MILES of 100 ft tall trees in Michigan at a cell aimed away from me using a high gain 600 MHz yagi on T-Mobile band 71. The other bands were uselessly attenuated (with smaller yagi antennas and diversity).

Verizon has historically had the edge because of 750 MHz (Band 13)

What do you mean by "high gain 600 MHz yagi"? you can't just attach an antenna to a cellphone, the phone doesn't have the connector for that, but also the FCC has Opinions about you doing that

You use a cell booster device that has an antenna that creates a micro cell.

I used a USB modem and had multiple antennas at my disposal

Total Wireless used to be the easy answer here, but VZ just bought them (of course.) However, their plans (Total By Verizon, it's now called) are still pretty competitive: $30/m for 5GB data (2G speeds after that), unlimited T/T.

I've been a customer of theirs for years, and like you, I barely ever use more than 1/2 GB of data. I always preferred the VZ network in my area as well. Not sure if VZ carried over the tradition, but TotalWireless used to run nice Black Friday sales on low-midrange Android phones as well. I highly recommend one of the Motorola phones around the $200-$300 (less on sale) price point.

I like US Mobile. Their plans are affordable, and you can subscribe to a nominal amount of data and then buy more as-needed.

I also tether and it just cuts into my ordinary data.

I’m not very familiar with the dominant internet providers out there, but Xfinity Mobile has been a great experience for me.

If you’re already am Xfinity Internet subscriber, it’s even cheaper, and the app makes switching between data plans dead simple and achievable within about a minute from the app.

I subscribe to the cheapest option, and if I ever need more data, I just bump up the plan for the rest of the month.

As far as I know, US Mobile is the only one other than Verizon-owned Visible that has some allocation of data at equivalent priority to Verizon postpaid customers.

RedPocket has $10/mo for 1gb data plans on VZW, which is marked as the CDMA provider on their site.

And you can buy annual plans from RedPocket via eBay for even cheaper.

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Verizon post-paid has a $25 plan though.

Used to be with Visible up until a few months ago, but their issues with deprioritization started to make it almost unusable. I'd often look at my phone and have 3-4 bars, but nothing would load. Speed tests indicated data in the kilobytes range or just failed.

Switched to US Mobile (which as long as you have a 5G capable phone, puts you on their high-priority QoS tier) and haven't had an issue since.

Us mobile or visible

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