For everyone with a good working smartphone today, it's undoubtedly needful to have a network provider you subscribe to their services. Except that smartphone would be used for only offline purposes of watching movies, playing games, listening to music only, and all that received through a shared means. I find it quite surprising though that someone in this age and time would go that route. And if this is a reality, I guess that phone is less of a smartphone than it should be.
To connect and be online, carry out certain tasks of social media, entertainment, study/research, do business even as well as listen to music or watch movies, an internet connection is certainly necessary, one that would surely require the services of a network provider. It's now left to the user to decide which among the number of available options to register with.
For my part of the world, four of these network providers seem to be the available and major ones. Though I'd preferably like to narrow them down to three or two for some reason, chuckles. And yes, the availability of good network strength in an area determines which to go for. I've seen people drop their former network provider for another due to the strong network connection of the network over the one they were using. This, you could say in a way also determines where one could choose to reside.
MTN, Airtel, Glo and 9Mobile are the major network providers we have here. I've been privileged to somehow use all. However, I have my main provider and preference for the MTN network. This was the first network I registered with, along the line, I got engaged with the other three as well. Currently, I use MTN and Glo. The latter is more of a shadow network to me. I hardly use it now because my current location has a poor connection strength of the network, which I can't deal with. Beyond that, it's proven to be somewhat unreliable.
Thanks to the MTN mast available where I currently reside, I could get a good network connection. The availability of a good network is a great influence on the choice of where to reside. In my case, I had to consider that in some ways too. I remember a friend who was searching for a place to move to specifically tell me to please ensure I consider the network strength of MTN in the locations I helped him check out. You could say such was part of the considerations of many.
Notwithstanding, there have been moments where these networks have failed me. I can't tell of how many times the Glo network put me through that; being that it was the seemingly preferred network in that particular area then. However, it failed me severally; like a time I was working on my project questionnaire created through Google form. Even in this present location and over time, MTN had given me a handful of disappointments too. Moments where I urgently needed it for some important things down to casual ones like when I was hoping to stream a good match.
I guess these networks aren't immune to fluctuations and issues, no matter how good their connection strength might seem to be. Data and call rates are some factors considerable while selecting a network. However, this is highly overpowered by the strength of a particular network in an area, making it more or less of a choice, by force.
Images are mine.