The Best Cell Phone Plans in Columbus, OH for Coverage, Speed & Price

The best cell phone plans in Columbus by category:

• The fastest wireless carrier in Columbus: Verizon Wireless, average speeds reported over 400Mbps
• The widest available wireless carrier in Columbus: TIE (T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, AT&T)
• The largest 5G network available in Columbus: It’s close between AT&T and T-Mobile, both covering over half the city
• The most affordable wireless carrier in Columbus: Mint Mobile and Boost Mobile both have plans starting around $10 per month

Not everyone thinks of Columbus as a tech hub, but the city is finding itself growing rapidly and businesses of all shapes and sizes growing within the area. Columbus has some major universities nearby, which has strengthened the city and urban core, with a growing job market.

If we were the betting type, this type of growth tends to point to a city getting ready for an economic boom, and expect population increases to follow shortly. Because of that, technology services are expanding rapidly to meet consumer demand in Columbus, including wireless carriers. The big three, T-Mobile, Verizion, and AT&T are all rapidly expanding their services in Columbus, and several other smaller budget and startup mobile carriers are successfully growing their customer base in this large Ohio city as well.

Below you can find the best mobile carriers available to Columbus consumers looking to compare plans as reviewed by the GammaWire team:

Top Mobile Wireless Plans in Columbus

Which Mobile Provider Has the Best Cell Coverage in Columbus?

The good news about a city like Columbus and its growing population is that you can’t really go wrong if you play it safe with a major carrier like Verizon, AT&T or T-Mobile.

As it stands right now though, Verizon is offering some insane speeds on their standard LTE network, with some users seeing download speeds north of 400 Mbps. This type of speed will make doing just about anything from browsing the internet to watching HD video nearly instant.

So our answer here is, you can’t really go wrong with one of the big three, but Verizon gets the nudge from us due to their ridiculous speeds. Check back in a few years though as T-Mobile and AT&T roll out more 5G network, because this could change the game.

Fastest Mobile Carriers in CITY (5G, 4G, LTE)

For your standard network plans, as it stands right now Verizon is blazing past the competition. Both T-Mobile and AT&T and north of 150-200Mbps, but Verizon is clocking in almost double that in some areas. On average across the city though, all three services float between 70-100Mbps for everyday usage.

As far as 5G availability, T-Mobile is currently slightly in the lead past AT&T, but they’re both close, with 50-60% of the city able to access 5G coverage. Verizon has been slower to roll out 5G networks, but haven’t necessarily needed to with their LTE network being so fast.

Cheap & Discount Cell Phone Plans in Columbus, OH

Because of how large of a city Columbus, OH is, you can generally find heavy competition across almost any service.

This rings especially true for mobile wireless carriers, with plenty of plans available across a dozen or so competitive networks.

The best place to start for a cheap cell plan in Columbus is probably going to be a tie between Mint Mobile, a newer upstart that is rolling a ton of budget into customer acquisition or Boost Mobile, a network that has been around a while and kept a large chunk of their customers happy. Cricket Wireless is also available here, as is T-Mobile subsidiary Metro.

We’d probably recommend rolling with Mint Mobile on this one.

Columbus, OH Zip Codes with the Best Cellular Coverage

• 43206
• 43201
• 43203
• 43202
• 43210
• 43211
• 43212
• 43224
• 43209

If you’re looking at the above list of zip codes in Columbus worried that you don’t see yours on there, you’re probably fine. Almost all major carriers in Columbus offer fairly reliable service across the city limits.