Also, did no one from Mint's public relations department review the copy for this announcement before it went live? "Two excited guys, one video"? Seriously?
That's probably on purpose.
Definitely
T-Mobile Reaches Agreement to Acquire Mint Mobile for Up to $1.35B
91–100 of 197 posts
Re: T-Mobile Reaches Agreement to Acquire Mint Mobile for Up to $1.35B
#92This is Ryan Reynolds' second company he has sold which he has a "significant stake" in after he sold his Aviator Gin to the big whale, Diageo brands. He's been able to leverage his status and marketing talent to grow those brands significantly. Other actors, athletes also do this, but perhaps he is the most noticeable. George Clooney also sold an alcohol brand to Diageo. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-…
As a football enthusiast I'm also really interested to see where he takes Wrexham.
I did really enjoy the documentary/tv show!
Re: T-Mobile Reaches Agreement to Acquire Mint Mobile for Up to $1.35B
#93When I first came to this country as a broke grad student, paying 80$-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 wit…
I do find the "unlimited" plan claims annoying. Most operators make this false claim. I know for sure that Tello does something similar, and their fallback is a "2G" (not actually 2G, just throttled) throttled speed to about 64kb/s. This is effectively unusable, and while they might claim it is just "slower", in application, many requests will just timeout and cause errors at those speeds.
I think Mint and Boost throttle down to around 512kb/s, although not sure as I've never experienced, tested, or read about it myself.
Re: T-Mobile Reaches Agreement to Acquire Mint Mobile for Up to $1.35B
#94This is Ryan Reynolds' second company he has sold which he has a "significant stake" in after he sold his Aviator Gin to the big whale, Diageo brands. He's been able to leverage his status and marketing talent to grow those brands significantly. Other actors, athletes also do this, but perhaps he is the most noticeable. George Clooney also sold an alcohol brand to Diageo. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-…
The alcohol stuff always amazes me. Making a gin isn't rocket science. Aviation Gin was basically a no-name brand. The fact that attaching a celebrity name brings so much value is mind-boggling to me.
Re: T-Mobile Reaches Agreement to Acquire Mint Mobile for Up to $1.35B
#95I'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 Verge reported "The acquisition could let T-Mobile claw back the customers it lost when it sold Boost Mobile". It is especially interesting that this acquisition is taking place at the same time Boost Mobile is experiencing a major technical problem. The problem has persisted for many weeks and has even forced them to shut down payment processing. During this period, their support team has been totally useless. I…
It is astounding how bad Boost’s problems have been. Their customer service basically hasn’t been working for almost three weeks now.
Re: T-Mobile Reaches Agreement to Acquire Mint Mobile for Up to $1.35B
#96This is Ryan Reynolds' second company he has sold which he has a "significant stake" in after he sold his Aviator Gin to the big whale, Diageo brands. He's been able to leverage his status and marketing talent to grow those brands significantly. Other actors, athletes also do this, but perhaps he is the most noticeable. George Clooney also sold an alcohol brand to Diageo. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-…
Ryan Reynolds youtube channel is an exemple in how bad 99% of advertising campaigns are. Almost everything he posts are ads for his companies or ventures, and not only am I subscribed but I eagerly watch every content he post as soon as I get the notification. A part of it is that it's funny and well made, the other parts is that the content doesn't have that "bullshit ad" factor, I don't know how to explain it, he k…
I'm not sure you can blame advertising campaigns. Ryan Reynolds' 'thing' is being self-aware that he's Ryan Reynolds doing something. It's basically the M.O. of Deadpool.
He makes it look easy, but I'm sure it's hard to replicate.
Re: T-Mobile Reaches Agreement to Acquire Mint Mobile for Up to $1.35B
#97I'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…
> even though Mint uses the same exact network. It's the same network, but you get the capacity that's left over after everyone on T-Mobile has had their fill. Which is why I don't get why everyone is always so excited about these MVNOs. To me, it's like bragging about how cheap airfare is when you go standby: "It's the exact same planes!".
It's one of those things where if it works in your area, it works great. I've been on MVNOs for a decade now and the worst I've ever experienced was sometimes my data rate would drop to a couple mbps in crowded areas, but that's never been a material problem for me. I happily spend the $10-15/mo and get service that exceeds my needs. Sure it won't work for everyone in all cases, but you shouldn't discount MVNOs out of hand just because they are second class networks.
Re: T-Mobile Reaches Agreement to Acquire Mint Mobile for Up to $1.35B
#98I'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…
> even though Mint uses the same exact network. It's the same network, but you get the capacity that's left over after everyone on T-Mobile has had their fill. Which is why I don't get why everyone is always so excited about these MVNOs. To me, it's like bragging about how cheap airfare is when you go standby: "It's the exact same planes!".
It's not hard to understand: many people simply don't need a high-speed unlimited data plan for their phones. Not everyone makes a habit of streaming video over their cellular connection.
Re: T-Mobile Reaches Agreement to Acquire Mint Mobile for Up to $1.35B
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 wit…
Product differentiation for various markets and price discrimination are both common techniques that even a monopoly can use to extract more profit. They know that not everyone would be able to afford the top tier of service. If Toyota were the only car company, they wouldn't only offer top end Lexus models. They would probably retain the various tiers, and simply try to capture the maximum consumer surplus at each t…
Yep I remember all the great deals on phones and phone service you could get back when Bell was the only option. Good times. /s
Re: T-Mobile Reaches Agreement to Acquire Mint Mobile for Up to $1.35B
#100I'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…
I wouldn't say that it's really a threat. Part of what you're offering Mint is a guarantee that you aren't going to churn for an entire year each time you renew along with an up-front payment so they don't have to worry about chasing down payments. I'd also note that the $15 annual plan is a 4GB plan. Normally, Mint charges $25/mo for that 4GB plan if you buy in a 3-month increment.
It looks like Mint also doesn't include taxes and fees in their plans (See Taxes, Fees, and Surcharges https://www.mintmobile.com/plan-terms-and-conditions/). Taxes and fees can easily become a large portion of one's bill. It looks like that 12-month 4GB plan will have a $14 recovery fee ($1.17/mo) plus 2.5% ($0.38/mo). On top of that, there's the Federal Universal Service Fee (~10%, ~$1.50/mo) and whatever state/local taxes and fees exist in your area (which are probably 10-15%, but might be above 20% if you live in a high-wireless-tax state like Illinois). So that $15 4GB plan is likely around $20/mo (a third higher).
When you look at Mint's 12-month unlimited plan, it's $30/mo + taxes and fees - and it's not even unlimited! It's a 35GB plan! Plus, when you add in the taxes and fees, it's likely to cost over $38-40/mo.
Heck, on the 3-month 4GB plan, you'd be paying $25/mo + $1.50/mo in recovery fees + 2.5% ($0.63/mo) + USF and state/local taxes and fees bringing the plan to around $32-33/mo for a 4GB plan. A big portion of your savings is that you're willing to pre-pay for a year.
You can literally see that Mint values the 1-year advance payment as worth $10.58/mo to them (including the difference in recovery fees). So it's not just "Mint is $15 (really $20 with taxes/fees)." It's that pre-paid annual billing is probably worth $10-15/mo (given that I'm comparing a 3-month and 12-month plan and Mint's site doesn't seem to list 1-month plans).
> shaking my head at those who are paying double or triple that rate on T-Mobile
I think what a lot of people miss when thinking about plans is phone promos. If you don't want the latest phones, that's great and you shouldn't be on a plan offering phone promos.
For example, let's say you want a new iPhone every 2 years. T-Mobile will give you $800 in credits when you trade in your device. The trade-in is likely worth $300 making the credits worth $500. Each month you'd be getting $20.83 in credits. Let's say you're on a family plan with 4 lines and paying $42.50/line. When you subtract out the phone promo, you're down to $21.67 which is almost the same price as the Mint plan once you factor in the taxes and fees that you're paying on Mint. Plus you don't have to pre-pay a year in advance. Plus you're getting unlimited data, 40GB of hotspot, a $15 Netflix credit, 5GB of high-speed data when traveling internationally, and more. Divide that $15 Netflix credit and it becomes $3.75/line dropping the price to $17.91/line and you're getting unlimited data instead of 4GB and a cheaper price.
If you don't want fancy phones and don't want unlimited data, it might not be worth it to you. You can think of it as companies figuring out how to charge people the same money in different ways. Mint is giving you a very limited data bucket, adding taxes and fees onto the plan, and you have to buy your phone at full price. T-Mobile is offering phone promos and entertainment credits that can make the plan effectively cheaper than Mint while offering unlimited data and even international roaming.
> 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.
It's highly unlikely that Mint was eating their lunch. It's more likely that T-Mobile wants a brand that can sell limited-data bundles to people like you who don't want to pay for an unlimited plan, pay for the overhead of stores, etc.
The problem with your argument is that you're comparing apples and oranges. First, you discount how much you're paying by going with the nominal charge and ignoring taxes and fees. Then you ignore the fact that you're getting 4GB of data rather than unlimited data. If I compare Mint's "unlimited" plan (which is actually only a 35GB plan), it's suddenly the same price as offerings you can get from T-Mobile (on a family plan) or its Metro sub-brand (as an individual). If you price in phone promos, entertainment, etc. T-Mobile's offerings can be a lot cheaper.
No, Mint isn't eating T-Mobile's lunch, but they have created a good following among people like yourself who aren't looking for an unlimited data bucket and want a low monthly fee and are willing to pay for a year in advance. If T-Mobile were concerned about Mint eating their lunch, they could just increase their MVNO fees. No, Mint has found a way to get people to pay for limited network access in advance which means a lot lower churn and a lot lower billing costs - Mint itself values annual billing at over $10/mo compared to quarterly billing!
Mint's rates aren't really lower than T-Mobile's. You're just interested in saving money on a limited-data bulk-purchase product that T-Mobile doesn't sell (and doesn't want to clutter their current brands with).