T-Mobile Completes Acquisition of Mint Mobile | Hacker News Reader

T-Mobile Completes Acquisition of Mint Mobile

t-mobile.com

41 pointsleotravis1059 comments

I think it’s funny that their email could only point out two good things: free scam call tagging and roaming in Canada. Meanwhile concentration increases and increases…

Congratulations Ryan Reynolds!

He made enough money to now buy 3 football teams!

What (US) network is the HN crowd using these days?

not sure I count as the HN crowd but I've been happy with Verizon and its owned MVNOs for a while (particularly Visible). The service is generally rock solid and the voice quality is imo better than the other 2 carriers. Also, Verizon seems uninterested in customer imprisonment atm - any device bought from them automatically unlocks 60 days after purchase. CS can be spotty esp. since they also seemed to have gone down the path of outsourcing - previously it used to be US-based afaict and very competent ime.

Mint :|

I'm the cheapest of the cheap.

I use project genesis because they were giving away 21 months of service for free if you did some basic tasks for a couple weeks. I'm on month 6 or so of completely free, unlimited data/talk/text.

I hope they last long enough for me to see it through.

Edit:

What I would use without PG, which is what my wife is on, is US Mobile. 10GB/mo for $15.

basic tasks? like simple industrial sabotage missions?

Haha nothing that exciting. Like send 5 texts, make 5 calls, visit any 5 websites. Supposedly a 'network test.'

I just did it all in about 5 mins from bed each morning by calling/texting myself.

Mint

I’ve been on T-Mobile since the Sprint merger and been mostly happy with them.

My biggest complaint is that they don’t seem to take security as seriously as they should. They’ve developed a reputation for frequent security breaches. I’m not sure that any of the major networks are great at that. Somehow a scammer was able to order 2 brand new iPhones and charge them to my account when I was still under Sprint. Customer service dropped the charges immediately when they saw the shipping address was far away from anywhere we’d ever lived, but it was still frustrating.

Mint :(

I've been using Ting mobile since 2015. My bill was ~$45 for two lines for years, and recently dropped to $30, seemingly because we're not being charged for data anymore.

I switched to USMobile recently when they dropped their prices. Don't need much data, $18/mo pool covers both me and my wife easily.

I miss Tello, thought. The Sprint network used to be the strongest and most reliable in our area, but after they got bought and shut down we had to switch away.

I use Google Fi + Visible in one phone and switch between the two as needed.

Fi: free international roaming in most countries, good tether speeds in urban areas in the US, 4 additional data SIMs at no cost for robots and other hardware projects that just use data from your main plan

Visible: better rural US coverage and fills in a lot of Fi's coverage gaps

How do you do this? Is there a button somewhere in android to switch networks?

Some phones have multiple SIM slots.

I've never used eSIMs but seeing as they're just bytes, I would imagine you could switch them much like wifi networks.

One eSIM for Google Fi + one physical SIM for Visible.

You can switch which network is used for mobile data in the settings. (As much as I wish it had an option to failover to the other rapidly ...)

Tello has been great for me so far, I'm on the 5GB plan for under $20/mo.

I use Mint because I'm cheap.

Experience is definitely subpar coming from T-mo - at times slow/laggy. But it works well enough.

Very happy with US Mobile.

$30/mo unlimited everything, and I average 50gb/mo with tethering. Uses both the Verizon and T-Mobile networks, best of both worlds. And very happy to not be paying $100/mo anymore.

Details? (I'm about to go look, but mobile providers are about as transparent as residential ISPs)

I also use US Mobile and have been generally quite happy. I need a much cheaper plan than the parent post though. I think I'm at about $18/mo which gets me the unlimited minutes/texts and 6gb of data per month. I'm typically on wifi so tend to use about 1gb a month of data, the extra data is mostly for the rare occurrence that my internet is out and I need to tether for work.

Support tends to be wishy-washy but each issue I've had has been resolved, so I can't complain really. I think I've had two issues in the 3 years I've been with them. Maybe 3 conversations with support total? The third was getting assistance flipping to eSIM as it had just rolled out at the time so there wasn't a super clear solution (to me) at the time.

Oh, I'm on the Verizon network, and have never seen deprioritization. I am in a small town though, so I'd be shocked if I was going to encounter it, probably larger cities it becomes a thing.

Visible, which is a Verizon entity. Its primary advantages are that it is cheap, unlimited, and the pricing is free from fine print and gotchas -- the price is simply the price.

I'm on a (hypothetically) perpetual promo that costs me $35 per month for their better tier, which for me mostly differs from lesser/cheaper tier in that the first 50GB of data I use in a month has a higher priority than the cheaper ($25) tier.

Performance is fine for my usual needs, and native Verizon coverage is excellent in my neck of the woods.

(Why so cheap? No stores. No bricks, no mortar. No support outside of chat. No roaming. No 3G, even in places that might still only have 3G coverage. LTE and 5G only.)

My favorite source for current MVNO options: https://prepaidcompare.net/

My household of 4 adults independently chooses Visible (cheapest tier, $25/mon which offers unlimited data (and and unlimited hotspot, though capped at 5Mbps)). Due to the slow hotspot speeds I might migrate DW & I to US Mobile which offers high priority high speed hotspot (up to 30GB/month at about the same price when shared across 2 lines) which could be valuable when we're traveling.

A little birdie once told me that mangling the TTL on outbound packets to 65 (either on the connected machine(s), or on a separate intermediate router) may be able to get around that particular hotspot throttle.

Legacy T-Mobile plan (SimpleChoice with 10 lines and lots of grandfathered benefits) for about $270/mo.

The lack of any fluctuation in billing make it easy for me to offer lines to extended family.

I switched from T-Mobile to Mint. This makes me sad. I've unwillingly returned to the company I previously left due to poor service, incorrect charges, and extensive time spent with customer support.

Kind of weird, because Mint has always been using T-Mobile's network, and cuts costs by having terrible support. Mint is just a middle-man, a reseller of T-Mobile's network.

For the record, I have been a Mint customer for going on 3+ years now, pay for my plan annually and I love it. But, I switched from T-Mobile, because I knew they were still the T-Mobile network, and I understood from research online that the price trade off is potential de-prioritization, and their support wasn't very good. But that doesn't really matter to me because I hardly ever need support.

I switched away from Mint because of a nightmare after losing an iPhone and having to pay for a new eSIM. You only get 2 eSIMs per year.

And wiping an iPhone via iCloud erases the eSIM. So my phone died, and I couldn't track it. I wiped it remotely. As I had some issues with restoring backups I exhausted my 2 eSIMs in 1 year.

I paid it, and ported out once my plan was up. Now on Visible, with unlimited eSIMs.

I had a good ride with Mint for several years now. I am definitely very worried that enshittification starts now. I see the $15 promise but what happens with the other plans? I have 15GB for $20 which is perfect for me. I don't care for Mexico or Canada roaming.

I don't understand the latest turn in the MVNO business model.

The big carriers operate their gigantic networks and sell spare capacity to smaller players to make extra money.

These small operators sell service to customers who want lower costs and don't mind the fewer features and congestion. So everyone is happy and making/saving money.

Then in the last ~10 years the big carriers all go "nah" and start acquiring these MVNOs (MetroPCS by T-Mobile, Cricket by AT&T, TracFone/Straight Talk/Total by Verizon, Visible by Verizon, now Mint by T-Mobile).

So...what was the point of the whole thing? The carriers just spent billions of dollars for each of these acquisitions to gain back the customers that they gave away in the first place?

"I like money"

Customer acquisition would be my guess

> The carriers just spent billions of dollars for each of these acquisitions to gain back the customers that they gave away in the first place?

Yep exactly. My guess is they are going to be positioning their "primary" brand as a premium offering and push the MVNO they just bought as a "value/discount" brand. Toyota & Lexus. Same company, same car platforms, different features.

Theory I just made up:

The big carrier doesn't know what to do with all their extra capacity, so they let startups buy it.

Once a startup has figured out what to do with the capacity, it makes sense for both parties to merge. Everyone makes a profit, and life goes on!

You can think of it as a way to outsource innovation.

> Once a startup has figured out what to do with the capacity

But...they didn't really figure out anything new. They just sold the same service for cheaper.

If T-Mobile had a $15/mo unlimited plan then there would be no reason for anyone to use Mint Mobile. And TMo could have saved the $1.5B.

That's proven now, but it wasn't always known. Better to make money letting others take risks first and then buy them once they've proven the market

It's stratification. People using their $15/mo plan would talk about how t-mobile as a whole is garbage and turn off higher end customers.

If T-Mobile sold a $15/mo unlimited plan with their own name on it, then nobody would be buying their plans for $50+/mo.

Sometimes you don't have the resources to go after the lower tier market, or don't want to segment your brand.

Let startups fight it out and just aquire the most successful one.

I think it goes something like.

1. MVNOs allow the big carriers to maximize the utilization of their network without sullying their own brand image by having people on their lowest tier plans with de-prioritized traffic complain about the brand. Imagine if AWS sold preemptible EC2 instances under a different brand.

2. Successful MVNOs tend to grow their customer base, often at the expense of the big 3 and get too big. Too big to be useful as a sink for preemptible capacity and too much of a revenue cannibal.

3. This prompts one of the big 3 on whose infrastructure they operate to buy them out thus regaining the market share.

4. The big carrier then extracts more value from the in-housed MVNO by raising prices.

5. GOTO 1

If you are offering consumer products, then you generally want to offer 3 tiers. It is conventionally known as good-better-best [1]. But you also have to be careful attaching your brand to all three because people don't want to pay best prices for good level product. If you visit the carrier websites they are targeting the better and best level. You'll note they don't list the acquired mvnos in their plans on their sites.

Those mvnos all competed on price and lowest product level. While it may not seem like it, it is expensive and time consuming to build a brand. Many fail. And many upper brands fail really badly when they try to build a low end brand.

The carriers are acquiring an established low brand:

* that has figured out how to do it and survived

* along with a bunch of customers

* that use your unused network capacity

* have retail locations and staffing (except Mint)

* have figured out how to distribute their product (eg other and own retail locations)

* have figured out how to acquire and retain customers

* have figured out how to provide customer service

They get to acquire all that without affecting their main brand. The people involved aren't idiots, and it turns out it does have great value. Billions in some cases!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good%E2%80%93better%E2%80%93be...

I’m curious why the US and EU have taken on big tech but have never really gone after these carriers for much of anything.

Meta or X can’t breathe in the direction of another social media company without an antitrust suit.

How many different businesses can put up cellular towers all over the country?

The US has 3, and had 4. Seems like a pretty big cost to add more redundancy.

You realize that Mint Mobile is already using T-Mobile’s network?

How much competition would Mint Mobile actually be for T-mobile?

Once they own Mint, Mint just becomes their lowest tier plan. You can keep moving the lowest tier price up to the point the standard T-mobile package becomes attractive.

Mint no longer works independently in applying pricing pressure. The pressure that made T-mobile even buy Mint (however little pressure) is now gone.

Mint as an MVNO never worked independently in applying pricing pressure. It was always beholden to the minimum cost of one of the big 3.

New MVNOs will launch, others will fail. The only thing I've learned from this is to try and invest in anything Ryan Reynolds is selling.

Mint paid T-Mobile for spectrum. T-Mobile could have raised prices that Mint pays, even if Mint is a competitor.

They didn't pay for spectrum -- MVNOs (such as Mint) don't operate at that level.

MVNOs mostly just exist to re-sell existing services that are provided by existing cellular networks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_virtual_network_operato...

> You can keep moving the lowest tier price up to the point the standard T-mobile package becomes attractive.

That only works in the real world if there is zero competition.

But there is competition. There are over 100 MVNOs operating in the US -- with dozens of them using T-Mobile's network.

That only works in the real world if there is zero competition.

This becomes virtually true regionally I think. I believe you that there are 100s of MVNOs, but I only saw Boost and Mint within my area physically. Now one is gone.

I’m still in an area where I have two options for Internet, one of which is on top of the other’s infrastructure. There are hundreds of ISPs nationwide, I’m sure, but not in my area.

Buying out under-cutters and re-listing the service at the price you prefer is a crude and simple strategy and can only really be done by the largest players.

In the US, MVNOs are happy to sell you service nationwide. All of them resell services that are ultimately provided by one (or more) of the big 3 carriers.

It is completely dissimilar from the hardwired ISP market, wherein: With MVNOs, choice absolutely abounds, and there is competition a'plenty.

It isn't regional.

Mint is great. Have been with them for 5 years. Has been flawless. I have 30$/month unlimited plan.

Yeah, this looks like it will start the enshitification process. Not sure where to go next. Don't really want to go back to a 100$/month bill.

Visible has a $25/month unlimited plan

Thanks! Will look it up. I was worried as it seems a lot of those ultra low cost carriers are heavily throttled. Never saw that with Mint.

Boost also offers $25 unlimited on AT&T, 30gb high speed. They also have a 2gb plan for $10.

> They also have a 2gb plan for $10.

Seems like a good option to have a second number that you hand out to stupid 2FA businesses and banks that isn't your real number. Set the ringer for that number on mute or hook it up to a throwaway phone that sits somewhere plugged in and forwards SMS to your e-mail or some such.

The cheapest option that I know for this is Red Pocket's "phone plan" on eBay for a total yearly charge of $30.

They are at the bottom of this page:

https://www.redpocket.com/plans/annual

Numeric PINs are issued by eBay - use them within a month (or less), or they expire and there are no refunds.

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