Ok here you go, I will be nice...
CDMA Carriers are going to give you the best "High Speed" rural coverage in the plains.
Verizon & Sprint being the best, I will try and break these down for you based on my thoughts...
Verizon:
Pros:
Hands down the best network on the plains, since they bought Alltel (A Rural carrier) they have the largest 3g footprint, you may have seen it in their ads.
Cons:
Expensive, Verizon don't have many ways to score a discount. Their 5GB cap is a hard cap so if you break it be ready to pay.
Sprint: (My preferred network)
Pros:
Sprint customer service has improved and is on the rebound, personally I never really call them.
If you can't get Sprint coverage you roam on Verizon, so you get the power of both networks... (See cons)
It's really easy to find a discount program with Sprint one way or another check sites like
www.sprintusers.com or
www.howardforums.com. I pay $45/mo for my card.
Sprint's cap is a "Soft Cap" meaning you need to break it 3 months before they will get angry with you, but I have yet to hear anyone get enforced on the "Soft Cap"
Cons:
The Sprint network has locations not on EVDO where Verizon is EVDO, so your going to find some pockets where your on 1x where if you had Verizon your would have high speed.
US Cellular:
Pros:
Great customer service however very small network of their own lots of roaming.
Cons:
Their own network is slow in most spots, being very slow about rolling out EVDO if at all, if you are roaming your always on 1x.
AT&T: (GSM) is not really big outside of the South, get north of ICT and you will find yourself on the EDGE network and roaming most of the time.
In the end if you are going to "Buy" the card look for discount sites like
www.wirefly.com or
www.letstalk.com they will more than likely have cards that are $99.99 at the store for free.
Sprint will not let you activate a eBay card without a 2year contract so there is no score with that, however you might pickup a free MiFi from some place like Wirefly, sell it for $200 and buy yourself a USB stick for less than $50 and pay a couple months service.
Verizon will let you activate a ebay card without a contract so you can turn it off when you don't need it, you will have to pay the $35 activation fee each time.
There are some datacard options for you
Can someone let me know if they use the same set up?
