Good Cell Phone Companies To Use OTR?

Can anyone give me any advice on a good cell phone company to use OTR. I plan on starting over the road and want to be able to keep in touch with my Boyfriend and family while I'm out. I have a Prepaid Straight talk phone now. I'm not sure if it will be good for service or if I should get a contract phone. Any advice would be Greatly Appreciated. I would also like to Thank Everyone for all the Great Tips and Advice. Thanks to all the good advice on this site I have several companies who want to hire me straight out of school and I'm ready for the challenge.

Thanks Joan

I used to have straight talk. Unfortunately the high speed data runs out way too quickly. Once you are throttled back it is miserable. Kept waiting to hear "You Got Mail" (AOL and dialup reference). I have since went with cricket. They are owned by AT&T. They have probably the cheapest Unlimited data option. Verizon also has an Unlimited Data plan. Hope this helps.

I have Sprint with unlimited data and 10 gigs of hotspot per month. There are areas where I am roaming. All companies will have dead areas. You will want data out here if you want to video chat and use apps like trucker path. Pilot truck stops have free wifi inside, you cannot stream videos on it. Pick what you can afford. On the other side, my trainer only had a flip phone. I'm not sure what company his service was with. My suggestion, is get out here, see how your current phone and plan work, then figure out what's the best deal for you.

If you're happy with your Prepaid Straight Talk, keep it. I'm using AT&T, which I think probably has the third best coverage, and I still haven't experienced any real problems with it. If I do lose service, it's only for a couple of hours at the most. Go OTR with your Straight Talk; if you find there are more dead zones than you can live with, rest assured you will have many opportunities while you're driving to stop somewhere and switch carriers.

For the prepaid plans, I highly recommend straight talk (if you don't use a lot of data) and ATT..with either, make sure your phone comes with the BLUE COVERAGE MAP.. the red one will leave you disappointed. I get excellent signals through the mountains of PA to remote backwoods places where they practically have to pipe in sunlight. I have ATT. It costs me about $60/month for unlimited everything.

I use T-mobile. Don't use T-mobile. Lol

I drop calls all the time, but the data usually works wherever I stop for the night.

I used to have TMobile. Before trucking, when I was home every night, I LOVED it. The coverage when I began driving OTR was terrible and I often had no service at all. I simply had to do something and ATT was recommended to me by other drivers at my company. I wouldn't have anything else now. Consistently good signal through Midwest, Southeast, Northeast and Midsouth.. Farthest west I've been was Denver and had no trouble at all. We don't generally run Western 11 so maybe someone else with ATT can chime in with their experience.

I used AT&T while doing a 2 month cross country road trip. Great on the I-44 corridor. Sucked on many northern roads. Thank God for google maps saving directions during many miles of dead spots. Can’t remember what roads exactly. I was told by a trucker friend that he swears by Verizon with only 2 dead spots he’s encountered with them. Downside is that Verizon is the most expensive of all carriers & when I was with them, their customer service was atrocious!

I am a Verizon customer, have been for decades. It's very rare that I loose a tower no matter where I am. Just as rare when a call to their customer service number is necessary. "Never" is close to the last time I had to call them.

Cost? Considering the phone is an essential safety and communication tool required to perform our jobs, at least part of it is a write-off.

Another vote for Verizon. You don't want my bill though. Unlimited. Jetpack, Note and phone.