...a service called Total Wireless. I'm fine with your recommendation of T-Mobile, but have you heard of Total Wireless by chance?
There are only a very few cellular companies that own their own network at this point, after a bunch of mergers and acquisitions in the past few years: AT&T, Verizon, Dish, and T-Mobile, I believe, are the only major players left standing.
There are other smaller companies that advertise that they are a cellular company, and they will often say things like that they are on "the nation's largest network", but that is very misleading.
What's going on is that these small companies have agreements with the large networks to carry their traffic. There would be nothing wrong with that, except that these small companies don't tell you that their traffic is lower in priority to the traffic of the provider they contract with. So you are unlikely to get the performance and reliability from a small company that you would get from one of the companies that own their own network. Also, if there is a network issue, a small company may not have any actual control over the issue.
It may still be worthwhile to go with a smaller company for specific needs. Some smaller companies will give service to customers that have bad credit when others might not. Or they may bundle services into a package that makes them appealing.
If you are wondering if Total Wireless is worthwhile, it's almost impossible to tell via a Google search. Almost all the hits are obvious shill sites and shill reviews. I can tell you that Total Wireless is sold by both Wal Mart and Target, and that it uses the Verizon network:
Total Wireless is one of the more popular mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs). An MVNO is a cell phone service provider, usually on the smaller side, that doesn't operate its own wireless network but instead sets up a deal with one or more major carriers. It purchases minutes, text messages...
www.wirefly.com