Technology

Fairphone or not T-Mobile isn't anything like what it used to be. If you're in a major city or suburb it's worth taking a serious look at T-Mobile. I'm on US mobile which is a MVNO that allows you to freely switch between all 3 networks with two simultaneously active at any given time. 90% of the time T-Mobile has far better and faster coverage than either of Verizon or ATT. It used to be that Verizon was by far the best, but their network capacity hasn't kept pace with T-Mobile's growth, even if your Verizon plan has priority data (as mine does). This difference shows most when network capacity is limited.

T-Mobile's rural coverage isn't as great as either of Verizon's or ATT's, but it's absolutely good enough for every road trip I've done. And when visiting family in rural northern Wisconsin only T-Mobile and ATT have reasonable coverage in their area. You can use a Mint Mobile trial SIM to see for yourself.

I think Verizon knows this too, all of the cheapest MVNOs have been switching to use Verizon's network in recent years. The ISP mobile networks you can often get a year of for free also nearly all run on Verizon now. If you're paying for your service, the Total Wireless $20/mo BYO plan with unlimited priority data and 10GB/mo of international data is the best deal out there by far. Verizon certainly wouldn't be providing MVNOs with the lowest cut rate pricing if they thought they had the best network.