Find the Best Cell Phone and Plan for You
PhoneDog's innovative comparison tool can help you save on cell phones and plans. Find the best phone and plan for you today with PhoneDog!
PhoneDog's innovative comparison tool can help you save on cell phones and plans. Find the best phone and plan for you today with PhoneDog!
Compare cell phone carriers in Washington to find the best cell phone carrier for your needs using PhoneDog. Compare cell phone carrier coverage maps in your area. Click or tap on the wireless carrier logos to view the coverage map for that carrier. Use our cell phone plan comparison tool to find and compare the wireless carrier plans, pricing, and more. The comparison tool includes major and minor carriers. The minor carriers and MVNOs run on the networks of one of the major carriers.
There’s no shortage of wireless plans on the market, and that’s good news for consumers because it makes it easier for them to find plans that fit their budgets and stay connected with the people they know. All those options can also make it challenging to narrow things down and find the right plan for use in Washington, though, which is why each consumer needs to start with figuring out what he needs in a plan and how much he is willing to spend.
One plan could initially look like the best deal, when in actuality it’s more expensive than another plan with the same number of minutes, text messages and data. That’s why the first thing a consumer should do after finding a good plan is compare it with other options. Checking out various cell phone options at the most affordable prices and with different plans is simpler than ever using PhoneDog, which helps consumers maximize their value with the best plan at the lowest possible price.
When choosing a carrier provider, it's always important to assess the coverage options in your area. Before picking a cell phone provider in Washington, you should make sure that your area has coverage. You wouldn't want to commit to a contract, only to go home and discover that you lack signal reception in your home, creating an uncomfortable situation where all your calls go straight to voicemail, making you have to leave the house every time you want to make a call. Even if you are paying relatively little for a cell phone plan, if you lack coverage in your area, your money will have been completely wasted. However, most carriers cover most areas of the country very well these days, meaning that you shouldn't have anything to worry about. Nevertheless, one should also check and double check your service carrier provider's coverage maps to make sure that your city is covered.
The majority of Washington residents want the same thing out of a cell phone plan, making it pretty profitable for cell phone providers to capitalize our modern communication requirements. Just like everyone needs to drink water to survive, modern society requires communication to survive. A cell phone carrier aims to provide you minutes, text messages, and data. However, if you don't have a smartphone, you might want a plan that gives you a reduced data rate. If you don't text, you might not need to purchase a texting plan.
Many Americans depend upon cell phones constantly, using their smartphone to check the score on sports games, set up a romantic fling with a stranger at a short notice, or secretly search the web under the table at trivia night. You need to know how much data you think you will be using. Do you use your smartphone to listen to music at work or watch videos while driving? You won't be connected to the internet while doing this and will need some extra data. You’ll want to make sure you have the best plan available in Washington.
There are three basic types of wireless plans: individual plans, family plans, and no contract plans. Are you single? If so, you will want an individual plan, giving you a single rate for data, text, and talk. Because you won't be sharing your deal with any family members, a single line phone plan may be the best deal for you. Unless for some reason you need to have two separate cell phones, you should be fine using a single-payer plan.
Family plans let you mitigate the costs of paying for multiple members of your family, bundling these up into a single plan. While these typically cost more overall, you save money if you have two or more family members needing to talk on the phone. This saves you significant money, making family plans ideal for sharing minutes, text message, and data fees.
On the other hand, you can get a prepaid or pay-as-you-go phone for quick communication needs. These are especially good for traveling in foreign countries, and involves no contract. This means that you can pick up the phone, open the package, and start talking. If you want, this can keep you completely anonymous, since no one will know that you bought that particular cell phone.
Contracts, by contrast, make you pay for a minimum of two years, committing you to a long-term relationship with your carrier. Make sure the plan you select has good coverage in Washington before making such a big commitment, otherwise you'll be stuck with your carrier for the foreseeable future. Typically, carriers charge a significant termination fee for breaking your contract. This hits you harder when you have a significant amount of time left on your contract.
Before choosing a wireless plan in Washington, consider how many people will be part of it and the services that everyone needs. Every carrier will factor the following into your plan: talk, text, and data.
When you choose a cheaper plan, you are able to limit the text messages and minutes to around 400 with a contract plan. However, many people would rather choose a plan that is unlimited if they talk and text often. This way, they do not have to worry about going over their limit. A prepaid plan allows you to load a wireless card with cash to pay for your minutes. You can buy these cards by the minute or as a package, such as $30 for a total of 500 minutes. When you have used all of your minutes, you’ll need to add more.
Another major factor that customers consider when choosing a cell phone plan is data usage. Many carriers in Washington charge high rates when large amounts of data are used, and there are almost no unlimited data plans available for wireless customers. For many plans, going over your allotted data is cause for expensive overage charges. To make sure that this doesn’t happen to you, it is important that you pick a plan that offers high data coverage every month.
Washington contains all the major coverage networks, and these often integrate the smaller carrier networks into their own coverage. The largest carriers include: AT&T, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile, and Sprint. You should be covered by all of these networks.
AT&T is perhaps the largest carrier network, and provide a plethora of plans to wireless customers. They offer individual, family, and no-contract plans, and give you a variety of options for customizing your plan to your specific needs.
Verizon makes you have to choose between either a family, individual, or no contract plan. Shared data plans must be used by either a single individual plan or a family, and are purchased alongside unlimited text and talk, as well as a required amount of data.
Sprint offers a variety of plans with coverage in Washington, including an affordable unlimited plan, making them optimal for data usage, especially because they boast a very affordable unlimited 4G LTE data plan.
T-Mobile offers only no-contract plans, which means that you make your monthly payments without having to commit to a long term contract. T-Mobile sells these as either individual or family plans.
You can also find a number of small carriers with service in Washington, called MVNOs, using the major carriers coverage, which we will help you locate by using our cell phone comparison tool.