Buy your own phone like everyone’s saying, but also use an MVNO instead of setting money on fire paying the major carriers. The better MVNOs even have multiple carriers and allow you to switch at any time.
The fact that people pay over $100/month for a phone bill is truly a uniquely mind-boggling American thing.
Depending on the MVNO you can get first-class priority data (my plan has it), but also this stuff has never made a difference in my experience. When I was on 'lower priority' data the differences in speed weren't noticeable if I had service at all, and in the cases where I was at some event where there was a lot of devices contending for access to the tower, nobody was getting service.
(I wonder if this unlocking policy will retroactively apply to the locked Striaght Talk phone I bought back in October.)