Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

T-Mobile Reaches Agreement to Acquire Mint Mobile for Up to $1.35B

mintmobile.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 197 posts

Re: T-Mobile Reaches Agreement to Acquire Mint Mobile for Up to $1.35B

#11

Post by toomuchtodo »

mataug wrote: post #8
bearjaws wrote: post #6

I used to love Mint, but since the population boom in Central Florida it is entirely unusable due to being a low priority network. This means on many occasions you will have almost no bandwidth, I am talking cannot stream Spotify bad. The worst IMO is traffic jams, the one time I really want to listen to music and it will start cutting out. If you're downtown there is a 80% chance you will not even be able to load a…

Google Fi is a MVNO just like Mint. I'm curious why Fi gets better reliability when Mint doesn't ?

Google pays for post paid priority on TMO.

Re: T-Mobile Reaches Agreement to Acquire Mint Mobile for Up to $1.35B

#12

Post by [deleted] »

mataug wrote: post #8
bearjaws wrote: post #6

I used to love Mint, but since the population boom in Central Florida it is entirely unusable due to being a low priority network. This means on many occasions you will have almost no bandwidth, I am talking cannot stream Spotify bad. The worst IMO is traffic jams, the one time I really want to listen to music and it will start cutting out. If you're downtown there is a 80% chance you will not even be able to load a…

Google Fi is a MVNO just like Mint. I'm curious why Fi gets better reliability when Mint doesn't ?

[deleted]

Re: T-Mobile Reaches Agreement to Acquire Mint Mobile for Up to $1.35B

#13

Post by apocalyptic0n3 »

petesergeant wrote: post #7
apocalyptic0n3 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$270-$335M if his reported 20-25% stake is accurate. I'm assuming he needed to do this in order to support his bid for the Ottawa Senators.

He'd be better off just finding someone rich to front the cash and being the face, much like with Mint

The reported bids are north of $900M. He can't afford to be the majority owner. But he's said a few times he wants to be more than just a spokesperson and wants to have real skin in the game. This sale likely enables that

Re: T-Mobile Reaches Agreement to Acquire Mint Mobile for Up to $1.35B

#14

Post by bob_loblaw »

petesergeant wrote: post #7
apocalyptic0n3 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$270-$335M if his reported 20-25% stake is accurate. I'm assuming he needed to do this in order to support his bid for the Ottawa Senators.

He'd be better off just finding someone rich to front the cash and being the face, much like with Mint

Especially since this so very common in the sports world - Derek Jeter and the Marlins, George W. Bush and the Rangers (back in the day), etc.

But, professional sports teams print money. Most of the infrastructure is funded by tax payers. Salary caps (this includes baseball) keep expenditures down. Fans root for laundry, so rationality is out the window. Just look at baseball, you can pull down a healthy profit while having a dog-crap team (looking at you Pirates). As long as the team is a private entity, there is zero financial incentive to put a winning team on the field. Owning a sports team is a pretty sweet deal.

Re: T-Mobile Reaches Agreement to Acquire Mint Mobile for Up to $1.35B

#15

Post by alsodumb »

When I first came to this country as a broke grad student, paying 80$-100$ or joining a family plan with friends, sometimes even strangers, seemed absurd to me. Mint was the only thing I could afford at $15 a month. The data was limited, like 4 GB a month I guess, but I had Wi-Fi everywhere and only needed data for navigation.

Good for the founders, they championed MVNO space in some way. Perhaps bad for Mint customers - T-Mobile wouldn’t just purchase them for no reason.

Re: T-Mobile Reaches Agreement to Acquire Mint Mobile for Up to $1.35B

#16

Post by [deleted] »

bob_loblaw wrote: post #14
petesergeant wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He'd be better off just finding someone rich to front the cash and being the face, much like with Mint

Especially since this so very common in the sports world - Derek Jeter and the Marlins, George W. Bush and the Rangers (back in the day), etc. But, professional sports teams print money. Most of the infrastructure is funded by tax payers. Salary caps (this includes baseball) keep expenditures down. Fans root for laundry, so rationality is out the window. Just look at baseball, you can pull down a healthy profit while…

[deleted]

Re: T-Mobile Reaches Agreement to Acquire Mint Mobile for Up to $1.35B

#18

Post by winternett »

alsodumb wrote: post #15

When I first came to this country as a broke grad student, paying 80$-100$ or joining a family plan with friends, sometimes even strangers, seemed absurd to me. Mint was the only thing I could afford at $15 a month. The data was limited, like 4 GB a month I guess, but I had Wi-Fi everywhere and only needed data for navigation. Good for the founders, they championed MVNO space in some way. Perhaps bad for Mint custome…

T-Mobile is purchasing Mint to fix pricing obviously. I've been fixed at $75 for my fake "unlimited" plan now for about 10 years and switching plans will somehow only make things more expensive... Now ads and shoddy apps eat up my bandwidth at 5G speeds every month so I get throttled when I work hardest on my device.

Even though Mint wasn't useful to me, T-Mobile buying them means that monopolies are getting away with consuming the competition to create a price fixed environment. Congress is too tied up investing based on insider information to ever protect our interests as consumers, so I'll just look forward to the day where I no longer need a mobile phone perhaps. :/

Re: T-Mobile Reaches Agreement to Acquire Mint Mobile for Up to $1.35B

#19

Post by pstuart »

bob_loblaw wrote: post #14
petesergeant wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He'd be better off just finding someone rich to front the cash and being the face, much like with Mint

Especially since this so very common in the sports world - Derek Jeter and the Marlins, George W. Bush and the Rangers (back in the day), etc. But, professional sports teams print money. Most of the infrastructure is funded by tax payers. Salary caps (this includes baseball) keep expenditures down. Fans root for laundry, so rationality is out the window. Just look at baseball, you can pull down a healthy profit while…

> Fans root for laundry

That's a keeper, thanks!

Re: T-Mobile Reaches Agreement to Acquire Mint Mobile for Up to $1.35B

#20

Post by jawns »

I've been a Mint customer for about 4 years, paying the annual upfront payment, which works out to $15/mo. And shaking my head at those who are paying double or triple that rate on T-Mobile, even though Mint uses the same exact network.

In terms of why T-Mobile is making this purchase, I'm pretty sure it's to take out someone who was eating their lunch.

I've always found it strange that an MVNO is able to operate on the T-Mobile network the entire time and undercut their rates so much that they become a threat.

I guess T-Mobile thinks there are two ways to resolve this: lower their rates to compete with the MVNO, or buy the MVNO ... which I'm sure will result in rate increases, even though they say they have no immediate plans to do that.

Post reply on HN