Methownet BB

Longtime Verizon customer looking to save money by switching to Mint Mobile for less than half the cost. Concerned, however, about quality of service/coverage. Verizon has been bulletproof for us for the last 10+ years. Can anyone with Mint Mobile shed some light as to their reliability and coverage throughout the valley? Mainly concerned with the Carlton through Winthrop area....

Mint Mobile is a MVNO [ mobile virtual network operator ] using the T-Mobile network. Deprioritization [ occurs when the wireless network you're on gives priority to other users and slows down your data speeds ]can be a major downside with these resellers of cellular data. In rural areas one might think there's not enough population to congest T-Mobile's oo-la-la big 5G [ there are three spectrums of 5G and rural areas are not getting the supersonic blastability of metropolitan 5g; Verizon's rural 4G is blasting the pretty much same spectrum/signal strength of low band 5G ] but that congestion can back up from US97 and hog the bandwidth transfer all the way up the valley. This can be experienced during peak travel times down valley or when there's an influx of mobile users locally during events.
So there's that as a possible inconvenience.

Continuity of towers working with line of sight will challenge the signal's strength at the signal travels. You'll hear from some folks how their 5G T-Mobile is fantastic but no listing of location in regards to towers... "It depends" is at play in nearly all factors of rural cellular reception (even down to the cellular phone model's antennae).

If you want to maximize your reception in your car or home (and return on investment costs of cell phone service) then a signal booster is the one-time purchase price ticket to do so.
Weboost is a dotcom site that offers such state of the art tools to enhance your accessibility.

Ultimately I wish there was a dependable path to co-op a family Verizon plan to bring their prices into reason but that sorta group accountability exercise seems a bygone era nowadays. Been with Verizon since bag phones, pay through the nose now and better my ROI with a signal booster (still have the other arm and leg...)

If you like Verizon, you might also consider Visible, which is also an MVNO. I switched from AT&T/Cricket to Visible years ago and it works great for me here in the valley, at $25/mo. (one line). More info here:
https://www.usnews.com/360-reviews/services/cell-phone-plans/visible-vs-verizon

Too much convo for me to slog through, but I wanted to weigh in and say that I live near Newby Creek (above Twisp river road) and have Mint and it works great. There are a couple small spots when I drive into town that briefly lose service but for the price, you can't beat it. It works at my house, but I'm a cheapskate and just mostly use wifi calling at home since I pay so much for Starlink.