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

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

#171
The company structure is quite unclear to me, but I remember the early days of 'Mint Sim', founded or cofounded by Rizwan Kassim.

That guy was on the subreddit basically acting as one man tech support, billing, and customer service. Always respected the heck out of that. Hope he made out like a bandit, his work ethic was off the charts.

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

#172
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sports teams' value is based on the brand. In terms of operations, they actually lose money for the most part, or it's not that profitable. I saw an interview with the Bucks owner Marc Lasry, who recently is selling his stake in the Bucks. The average NBA brand like the Bucks is worth around $3B right now. He bought his stake in 2011 for 150-300M.

I am highly skeptical of any claims made by owners/teams about their profitability. Here's a quote from a former MLB executive[1]: "Anyone who quotes profits of a baseball club is missing the point. Under generally accepted accounting principles, I can turn a $4 million profit into a $2 million loss, and I can get every national accounting firm to agree with me." There are all kinds of financial tricks one can play.…

I get your point about financial tricks. I've read the tax harvesting many owners use/do as well. Advertising and Real estate are also bonafide revenue streams, but arguably not good enough of a return by in itself. Also real estate, etc are huge projects, and not just bought for land to appreciate. A lot of it requires careful and strategic planning. It will not always work out.

But, it's missing my point that many owners are getting a 10x return on their investment when they flip the sports team mostly due to the brand going up in value, being a luxury item for the wealthy, or a status symbol, and hence growing 10x in Therefore, many new owners, and prospective ones at that as your example, the ones buying football or soccer teams...like the tech CEOs, hedge funds or Oil money, etc do so to either flip the trade to make 10x, or buy a brand to associate with for status.

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

#173
post #81
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a football enthusiast I'm also really interested to see where he takes Wrexham.

Hopefully not to just sell it :-( If he does eventually sell it, I hope it's to fans, not a corporation.

They did talk about selling it. From their doc, they knew nothing about soccer before buying it. Just the idea of promotion/relegation meant like as a business opportunity they buy a team for 2m in the 5th division in England, if they make it to the Prem, it'll be worth 100-150m, and in 5-10 years maybe more, if Prem League appreciates in advertising value, etc. Will be interesting, they will likely move up to the next division this year or next. Still moving up the next 3 divisions will be the toughest.

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

#174
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It all depends on how much they oversubscribe their frequency band. As a Verizon, Tmobile, or Att customer you might be able to get 1gbps down .. but why do you need that on your phone? Why are they popular? It makes little sense to pay $90 a month per line. With MVNOs the price is about 20-30$/mo. (Options out there: StraightTalk, USMobible, Lycia, Mint, Visble, Ting, Google FI, etc) Some of these carriers are even…

> Why are they popular? It makes little sense to pay $90 a month per line. Whoever is paying that much probably doesn't do his/her research or have access to some providers. I pay $35/mo to T-Mobile. 5 GB at high speed per month. Unlimited everything else. Seems their minimum is now $40/mo, but it goes down to $35/mo if you have two lines. I'm sure some MVNOs are a lot cheaper, and I'm all for it. But complaining tha…

Magenta MAX is T-Mobile's unlimited data plan; $170/mo for 2 lines. 2 lines with unlimited data with Mint is ~$60/mo. You are paying $35/mo because you're only getting 5GB data. Check how much similar plans cost in India, Europe, Israel, UK (spoiler: they are drastically cheaper).

You are delusional if you think T-Mobile and the other big network providers offer good value for money.

Having recently switched to Mint after years of being swindled by T-Mobile, I'm really sad to see this news.

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

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm pretty happy with my current mobile provider (a Verizon low-priority MVNO) Mind sharing who it is? Especially if you like them. I've been a Mint user for years, but I'm not a fan of T-Mobile (the company) and during some recent travels I've noticed that Mint-to-Mint calls have gotten really bad.

Visible. It's actually a Verizon subsidiary, but you pay $25/mo for unlimited talk and data (though low priority data). There's a trivial hoop you need to jump through to get that rate (join a group of other people with whom you never need to actually interact; there are multiple googelable public groups).

Ah, looks like they discontinued the Party Pay plan for new customers late last year: https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/18/23310640/verizon-visible-...

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

#176
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I just have a soft spot since he's Canadian, but I think in this case Mint's provided some real genuine net benefit for consumers and I think using Reynolds positioning helped them get there.

> Maybe I just have a soft spot since he's Canadian Given that Mint isn't available in Canada, I presume that you must be in the US.

OP said consumers not themselves specifically. OP could very well be Canadian and see that a fellow Canadian has provided a valuable service for American consumers even if they themselves aren't able to take advantage of that service.

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

#177
post #163
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It all depends on how much they oversubscribe their frequency band. As a Verizon, Tmobile, or Att customer you might be able to get 1gbps down .. but why do you need that on your phone? Why are they popular? It makes little sense to pay $90 a month per line. With MVNOs the price is about 20-30$/mo. (Options out there: StraightTalk, USMobible, Lycia, Mint, Visble, Ting, Google FI, etc) Some of these carriers are even…

Apparently Google Fi users have the same priority on t-mobile's network as t-mobile users do. https://www.reddit.com/r/GoogleFi/comments/wd5ijm/qcipriorit...

I used Fi for years, and was never super happy with it. There's a _rumor_ of it being the same priority, but I never actually saw any proof of that.

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

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why are they popular? It makes little sense to pay $90 a month per line. Whoever is paying that much probably doesn't do his/her research or have access to some providers. I pay $35/mo to T-Mobile. 5 GB at high speed per month. Unlimited everything else. Seems their minimum is now $40/mo, but it goes down to $35/mo if you have two lines. I'm sure some MVNOs are a lot cheaper, and I'm all for it. But complaining tha…

Magenta MAX is T-Mobile's unlimited data plan; $170/mo for 2 lines. 2 lines with unlimited data with Mint is ~$60/mo. You are paying $35/mo because you're only getting 5GB data. Check how much similar plans cost in India, Europe, Israel, UK (spoiler: they are drastically cheaper). You are delusional if you think T-Mobile and the other big network providers offer good value for money. Having recently switched to Mint…

> You are delusional if you think T-Mobile and the other big network providers offer good value for money.

What part of

> I'm sure some MVNOs are a lot cheaper, and I'm all for it.

did you not understand?

BTW, T-Mobile's cheapest plan now has 10GB - which is more than probably 95% of users need? Paying $60/mo for that via Mint is just money thrown away for most people. To give you an example, I never exceeded 5 GB/mo, let alone 10GB, in over 10 years of using smartphones.

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

#179
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check if your phone has Band 71 support for good long range communication to the tower with T-Mobile. It's 600 MHz and has excellent penetration through trees. I got 7 mbps up and down through SIX MILES of 100 ft tall trees in Michigan at a cell aimed away from me using a high gain 600 MHz yagi on T-Mobile band 71. The other bands were uselessly attenuated (with smaller yagi antennas and diversity). Verizon has histo…

What do you mean by "high gain 600 MHz yagi"? you can't just attach an antenna to a cellphone, the phone doesn't have the connector for that, but also the FCC has Opinions about you doing that

You use a cell booster device that has an antenna that creates a micro cell.

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

#180
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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!".

I understand this argument, but in practice it has never been a factor in my daily usage of the service. I think the bandwidth improvements by providers over the years have made this a mostly academic concern. I live in a major metro area that should theoretically be impacted by sheer volume of use, and I’ve also spent significant time on the road traveling (recent 7K mile overlanding trip through 15 states is one ex…

> I live in a major metro area that should theoretically be impacted by sheer volume of use,

Nah, those towers tend to be built & upgraded to have the capacity. Where you mostly notice the MVNO suckage is if you take the biggest road out of town, drive two hours, make a left turn, and then drive an hour away from everything. But then again, wide coverage has historically not been T-mo's strength anyway (they've improved a lot in last few years).

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