Mobile Internet

Disclaimer. This information is accurate to the best of my knowledge at the time of writing this post. The world of mobile internet is ever changing and has the potential to be out of date by the time I click Publish. Also note that there is no "one size fits all". What works for me, may not work for you. You must take into consideration where you will be traveling, budget, internet and bandwidth requirements and much more.

Options

Let's start by talking about options when it comes to Mobile Internet.

1. Cellular Providers (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, etc..). Cellular providers are by far the best option in terms of coverage, reliability, and availability. Plans for these providers are most of the time limited with data caps. Lots of carriers will say they have "unlimited" plans, which just means when you run out of your data allowance, they will slow you down to unusable speeds but not charge you overage speeds. Finding the right plan can be tricky, but I'll talk more about these down below.
2. Reseller Cellular Providers These companies such as MobileMustHave, Nomad Internet and others often have promises of unlimited internet, but they come with a lot of catches. Often these data plans have the lowest priority on the towers which means really slow internet in times of congestion (which can be frequent), and they are also volatile as there are a lot of these companies that just disappear leaving their customers with nothing. Tons of people have lost lots of money and been left with no internet by these providers. I don't recommend going with a reseller unless you are willing to take the risk and you have a backup plan if needed.
3. Star Link / Satelite Although Starlink has promises of providing mobile internet, their platform isn't currently set-up to work on the go. To have starlink, you must activate it to a physical address and be using it at that address. There's a change that you will be able to move service to a new address, but availability at that address isn't guaranteed and doesn't work in popular area. Keep an eye out for more availability, but right now it would only be a tool in my toolbox if I had one.

Cellular Carriers

1. Firstnet If you qualify for Firstnet, by far I recommend this plan for you. However, most full time travelers don't meet the requirements because you must be an active first responder. These are the only cell phone plans that are truly unlimited, with priority on the AT&T and Firstnet towers. This often is more than enough for anyone and backups are rarely needed. Firstnet plans start at $40 for a cell phone, $45 for a cell phone with hotspot, and $40 for a data only plan that you can put in a Pepwave or Hotspot device.
2. AT&T is by far my #1 recommendation available to the general public. AT&T won the Firstnet contract, and since then has recieved federal funding to build out the Firstnet core network which can and is used by AT&T customers when there's room. This also opened up Band 14 on LTE for all AT&T users. Yes, Firstnet customers have priority, but outside of heavy use by first responders, it's available for AT&T customers to use. AT&T has great coverage and bandwidth. AT&T prepaid also has a great 100gb/mo data only plan for $55/mo. You can get as many of these lines as you need for your usage. These SIM cards can go inside of Pepwave routers, or other mobile hotspots.
3. Verizon Verizon technically has the best coverage in the US, and are a great option for cell phone providers. Verizon really dominated the cell networks up until recently with LTE coverage. However, in most places Verizon doesn't have the backbone to handle the amount of data traffic on its network. Most of the time I fin Verizon to be significantly slower than AT&T. Just because you have 5 bars of Verizon LTE doesn't mean you'll be able to browse the internet reasonably. Verizon recently released new data only plans on their post-paid accounts that are comparable to other providers and have up to 150gb/mo/line.
4. T-Mobile T-Mobile is proving to dominate the 5G release across the country. The speeds and coverage already available are impressive. If you are in areas with T-Mobile coverage, especially T-Mobile 5G coverage, the speeds may be worth considering them. Keep in mind their network doesn't have the coverage the AT&T and Verizon do, so you will experience more dead zones the more you explore outside of major cities and metro areas. They have great plans and data caps on data only plans that if their coverage works for you, would be a great option.
5. Sprint Sprint has been acquired by T-Mobile and will be transitioning all customers to T-Mobile plans soonish in the future. I don't recommend starting any new plans with them.

So What do I Do?

1. Firstnet We both qualify for Firstnet plans. This is our primary source of internet. We have Firstnet plans on our cell phones with hotspots enabled. (We don't really use the hotspots, but handy to have just in case). We each have a data only sim card through Firstnet as well that we put into our Pepwave Max Transit Duo which gives us incredible bandwidth when we are both online as the Pepwave will utilize both SIM cards simultaneously.
2. Verizon Verizon is my "backup" provider for the rare instances we don't have Firstnet coverage (this is becoming increasingly rare). I have a second SIM in my phone which is Verizon that has 50gb of phone data and 30gb of hotspot data. Our iPads each have a SIM card that have 30gb of iPad data and 30gb of hotspot data. (Verizon was half the price of Firstnet for the iPads). We also have a 100gb data only plan with Verizon that is in the Pepwave for backup when needed.
3. Future In the Future, I think I would love to have Starlink instead of Verizon. But until it becomes more readily available it's not worth it for us. We do use 300-700gb of data a month between work and personal so we're always evaluating out options.

Hardware

This needs to be its own post. I'll link here to that post once I write it. :D I will note that my primary hardware is a Pepwave Max Transit DUO.