Sprint seems to have the least-spotty coverage. Virgin Mobile resells them packaged in some pretty decent pay-as-you-go plans. The coverage map shows solid LTE in urban areas, 3G over a wider area but with big holes in it, and only voice gives nearly universal coverage in the US. We’re nowhere near universal wireless data coverage yet.

The reality is far more interesting: 3G, LTE, and 4G are integrated data streams, up to 1 gigabit/second for 4G (I’m still scratching my head as to why that doesn’t violate the laws of physics, but it’s an international standard, and that trumps physics). Voice is just one kind of data they carry.

The fact that they’re the same service for voice and data is why I view paying for a separate voice plan as fraudulent: You pay $50 to use 1% of the available bandwidth in a voice stream, then another $100 for a data plan to use the other 99%. It’s not that the data plan is a great deal, it means that you’re getting ripped off by the voice plan for paying $50 to transmit so few bits.

Coverage is indeed a problem. The best plan has no coverage in this area. The next best, T-Mobile, people say is spotty and unreliable.

The others are expensive beyond belief, at least my belief.

I haven’t heard any personal reports re Cricket, but they don’t seem bad if they have any coverage. Anyone know about them?

Wish I could afford satellite. Can’t.

Frankly, I’m hugely impressed that the cell companies have kept up as well as they have with what must have been orders of magnitude increases in data flow through the cell phone system. At some point, maybe a new model will be needed.

My van has a little box in it that gives me internet on the road. It costs about 30 bucks a month with a 1 GB limit. I have no idea how it works. It’s some kind of 3G cell phone connection, but I’ve had good connections in the middle of nowhere where we can’t even raise a regular cell connection, and blackouts in the middle of cities.

Given the current state-of-the-art and pricing plans, the idea of a cellphone that can act as a wi-fi hot spot seems like a good compromise for another couple of years. Cell phone service is more universal than data, so you’ll always have voice as a fallback. You can ration the 2 gigabytes common to most data plans so that all your email and Zone chatting needs are covered, but it won’t buy you a movie: A two-hour film would eat up your entire month’s data allotment, and put you into platinum-plated overage charges.

Here’s the wild card: Free wi-fi is getting so common you start to expect it in certain venues, like airports and other transit terminals, libraries, coffee shops–wherever you go, wi-fi is as close as your nearest Starbucks. In a two-block stretch near my home, I can get free wi-fi at a library, a BevMo liquor pallet store, three coffee shops, two restaurants, and even a medical marijuana dispensary.

So don’t assume that the only way you’ll be able to get on the Internet on the road is by paying for an expensive data plan. You should be able to forage and live off the digital land just about everywhere. You might want a cheap data plan for a backup, but I’d hold it in reserve for when there’s no free service around.

Can you get coverage where you’re going? Note that voice and high-speed data coverage are not the same things.

Unlimited everything will cost you, probably in the range of $100 a month. I’m not even sure Metro has a data plan.

Ask yourself what you do on the road as far as data is concerned. If you’re checking e-mail once in a while, or watching movies makes a big difference. If you’re a sparse user, a limited data plan can cost a bit less.

Get a phone that allows you to turn that phone into it’s own “hot spot” for a wi-fi equipped computer. This is handy, and if you play your cards right, might even allow you to scrap whatever internet hookup you have at home. Several brands have this function.

There are websites that compare plans. Here’s one of them.

My family uses Verizon, but only my daughter has a smartphone with a data plan.