[selectodude]

Of the multitude of benefits of living in a major city, one of the big downsides is that in denser areas, the networks are permanently congested. I went the MVNO route for a month and in downtown Chicago on a work day, you have five bars and no service.

[krinchan]

Yeah I went with Mint in the South Florida metro once, and it was painful. Once a download started it finished pretty quickly, but the amount of lag between clicking a link and the page starting to load was on the order of 10-15 seconds.

Apps that pre-fetched a lot of data (like social media apps fetching a ways down your feed, music streaming apps that will fetch the next song, etc.) will operate somewhat okay but web browsing and map usage was pure hell.

The second I swapped my phone over to Verizon it was like night and day.

I might look into Mint again, now that I'm in a Verizion weakspot so to speak. Unfortunately, I took a BYOD rebate from them that they'd claw back if I left before April. :-/

[kkielhofner]

I tried Mint and Visible and experienced this. In Chicago and Miami they were useless. Even iMessage didn't work. I had more than a few occasions with no messaging, ride sharing, maps, etc and it was legitimately scary (being completely stranded).

I'm now on post-paid Verizon so I at least have a fighting chance in these permanently congested metros.

Amazing how much we depend on data!

[jerlam]

Doesn't even have to be an MVNO, depends on the priority level of your data. I have Verizon Prepaid and during weekends in a suburban downtown, my phone is almost a dead weight. In a tourist city, I'll have full bars and no service, every day from noon until night.

[nicoburns]

I’m kinda surprised to hear that. I’m on an mvno in London and have had zero issues. Only time I see congestion issues are at huge public events like like festivals or carnivals. But that tends to affect every network.

[selectodude]

That tracks. The dense parts of Chicago are denser than the dense parts of London.

[bombcar]

Depending on your use case - a MVNO that supports wifi calling + iMessage etc can help. It’s nice in rural areas where the signal is weak.

[selectodude]

I'm not trying to spend $40/mo to use wifi calling and iMessage. I'd rather spend $80 and never ever have to think about it.

[SkyPuncher]

Agreed. I loved the concept of wifi calling when it was introduced, but it always sucks when I use it. It always manages to find all of the flaws in the network I'm using.

It's just not worth the hassle when I can rely on a cell network that specializes in real-time voice communication.

[monksy]

USMobile supports wifi calling.

[Technetium]

I can confirm this.