Decrease in coverage for prepaid

Question

It seems like my coverage has decreased significantly over the past 6 months. I’m finding lots of dead zones that I didn’t have before. I’m in the Tampa area. It’s gotten so bad I’m considering switching to a different provider. I’m not sure if it’s a prepaid issue or just a fluke for my area. Has anyone else noticed this?

SynthpopAddict · Answer

Yes, that's part of being deprioritized.  I use the OpenSignal app to figure out where my phone is connected.

bleaudoggie · Answer

I knew we were deprioritized with regard to data speed, but didn’t realize we got pushed to other towers. Using towers further away would make sense for the coverage issue. It just threw me off because it was a sudden change from what’s been extremely good service.

SynthpopAddict · Answer

I don't live there, but as a fellow prepaid customer will tell you that we are deprioritized to all postpaid customers on the network.  While I haven't been noticing any extra dead zones in my area, I have noticed that my phone is now often connected to towers farther away than what it used to be.

Don't know about you, but my bill hasn't increased in all the time I've been using prepaid service (nearly 3 years now), while the postpaid customers have gotten various rate increases.  So I'm going to say it's another of those situations where we're getting what we pay for.