My old iPhone4 is out of contract with AT&T, so several months ago I switched carriers. T-Mobile has been trying to get in on the iPhone business, and to attract customers they’ve been offering monthly rates that don’t have the cost of paying off a $600 smartphone built into them. Plus they have a pre-paid plan that doesn’t include hundreds of minutes of talk time (which I have no use for) and has unlimited data usage. For half the cost of what I was paying on AT&T.
The reason this is relevant is because T-Mobile’s prepaid service also happens to have horrible coverage in northern Michigan. No, seriously:
(To be fair, T-Mobile’s on-contract coverage up north is better, but the carriers all run their pre-paid services on different, crappier networks.)
So I just swapped SIM cards and signed up for a (disposible) pre-paid account with AT&T, just to use up north. It’s as ridiculously overpriced as my old AT&T plan, but I can cancel it when I get done with this summer’s riding. There are still holes in their coverage (as I’ve seen in the past), but it should be good enough. Meanwhile when I’m around home, I can swap in the T-Mobile SIM and get my regular phone number back.