5 Cheap Carriers With the Best 5G

pcmag.com:

Your wireless carrier is probably going all-in on 5G, and it's going to cost you. AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon are all pushing hard to move people to their latest plans for 5G service, especially for single lines, but those plans may cost more than you're paying for your older plan.

But there's a big world out there of virtual carriers that resell the big players' 5G service for less, especially for single lines. And if you want to upgrade to 5G, but don't want to pay $80 per month, you can use these to get on board.

There are two big warnings, and a small one, if you go the virtual carrier route. First, if you have a big multi-line family plan, the multi-line discounts from the big carriers may match the pricing from virtual carriers that offer smaller multi-line discounts. Second, the smaller carriers tend to offer fewer phones on monthly payment plans than the big guys do.

The smaller warning is around something called deprioritization. While most virtual carriers no longer have speed caps (Verizon's Visible(Opens in a new window) being an obnoxious exception), data on virtual carriers may be put in a queue behind users of the carriers' own branded plans. YouTuber Stetson Doggett has some great videos(Opens in a new window) on this issue.

This list is a bit different from our story on the best cheap cell phone plans. I'm only going to list high-gigabyte data plans here, because part of the point of 5G is that there's massive capacity and you should be able to use all the data you want. If you're just looking for the cheapest basic cell-phone service, check out our story.

I'm also not including any AT&T-based plans here. As of mid-2022, AT&T's 5G network is significantly behind T-Mobile's and Verizon's in terms of