It will affect most of the world in a few years. Lurk around in the forum, and you’ll find some posts about which phones and carriers work well in the US. (I assume that’s where Chicagoland is?) VoLTE is enabled on an experimental basis for several phones running UT now.
I daily drive Ubuntu touch and like it very much, but I can see how that would be hard in certain situations. Keep doing some research, and pick one that seems to fit your needs to try it out! Only you can decide if it is good enough for your particular circumstances.