[sailor47]

We switched to Consumer Cellular about a year ago. Very Good deal in my opinion. We are not glued to the phone so the 600 minute plan with ?? data and 1000 text is great for us. That plan cost us $44 and change per month for two phones. Calls between our phones are free. I just can't believe what some folks pay for cell service. One carrier is offering a special deal $160.00/mo. Wow!! I don't know what phone tha includes.
Consumer cellular uses At&T lines so you will get good coverage around the country down here in TV no issues for us.
When we started our service we had one old AT&T flip phone that they provided a sim card for N/C. We bought one of there very inexpensive referbished androids, about $65.00 to get started. We may switch up to a higher end phone maybe not. I still just mainly use the phone for talk.
Beauty of the service is no contract. And you can up grade the minutes one month if you have a particularly heavy call volume and then down grade the next month no extra charge. In fact the android has an alarm to let me know if I am about to go over the plan allowances and I can upgrade if need be.
As far as coverage goes I have had AT&T and Verizon. At one time or the other both failed to work in TV because the area is growing so fast and the cell towers were not keeping up. I swithched from AT&T to Verizon and then back again because both companies had issues. Now I think both are good here.