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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

#51

Post by jjtheblunt »

jawns wrote: post #20

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…

Visible is the same for Verizon (and I think owned by Verizon): you get much cheaper rates, but you're prioritized lower for data traffic.

In a season vacation homes part of the country, where peak capacity is unused much of the year, it works out great.

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

#52

Post by tempsy »

jawns wrote: post #20

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 unlimited plan on Mint is $30 a month not $15, which is similar as a bunch of other prepaid plans eg Visible (Verizon's prepaid brand) which is $25/mo.

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

#53

Post by theGnuMe »

nonethewiser wrote: post #34
jawns wrote: post #20

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…

Same network but TMobile users get preferred access.

Yeah I was going to say it works great until it doesn't which I find is a lot of time as in more than 2x per day. I get throttled and it is basically nonfunctional. That and dropped calls.

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

#54

Post by dylan604 »

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…

You know Ryan already owns a sports team, right? There's an entire TV show about it. This isn't his first dip in that particular pool

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

#55

Post by ravenstine »

jawns wrote: post #20

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…

Either that or they don't change the rate for Mint, at least for a while, and keep their own rates the same knowing that most T-Mobile customers either won't put in the effort to switch to Mint or be totally oblivious to the whole thing. And they now have greater control.

For T-Mobile, they win no matter what. They can afford $1.5 billion.

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

#56

Post by dylan604 »

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

Does 20-25% really represent "being the face"? Did the company really give him that much equity to just be a face, or did he actually have to put up some capital?

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

#57

Post by morninglight »

jawns wrote: post #20

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 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.

In other words, Boost has a lot of very unhappy customers looking to jump ship and you can be sure that T-Mobile is aware of the situation..

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

#58

Post by dumpsterlid »

nwah1 wrote: post #24
winternett wrote: post #18

Earlier 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…

Have you ever dealt with companies with near monopolies? Are you seriously with a straight face suggesting they tend to act this way?

They never do because the WHOLE point of becoming a monopoly or near monopoly is so that the customer no longer dictates the terms of their relationship with the company. The company does. It is about a power shift and simply put power being taken from the customer is never good for the customer.

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