Best Internet Solution Using Cell Service, Smartphone with hotspot the way to go? Options

[jan-n-john]

I'm hoping that some of you with more experience can give me a hand.

My wife and I camp about 2 months per year. We use iPhones, an iPad, and a laptop on the road. We are fairly heavy internet users (but no big downloads like movies), and are tired of flaky/non-existent CG wifi, so I'm thinking about how to fix that. Since our current cell contracts are about to roll over and we'll be getting new phones anyway, I'm wondering if hotspot capable phones will be the solution, or if there another way to go that's better.

I'm thinking we can just use the new phones to feed the pad and the laptop. We can continue to use CG wifi when it's good, but use our own when it isn't. We need to have the new phones anyway, so this seems better than a stand alone hotspot device, especially since we only need it for limited periods, so it would be hard to justify buying and paying a contract fee for another device. Am I missing something, or does that sound reasonable. A contract with enough bandwidth shouldn't be an issue.

While I'm at it, I assume Verizon is more likely to have good service in typical rural areas, but is that the case? We currently have AT&T but will probably switch, partly due to local issues where we live.