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 example), and never once experienced a slowdown.
Wireless networks are pretty fast these days, and if I’ve ever been throttled, I just haven’t noticed.
YMMV, and maybe I don’t have use cases that are impacted by this, but after experiencing what I’ve experienced, I have no questions at all about my decision to move away from the big networks.
I’ve used Mint and Xfinity Mobile (Verizon MVNO).
> To me, it's like bragging about how cheap airfare is when you go standby: "It's the exact same planes!"
The experience and cost of using cheap airfare/standby is pretty well documented and rather dissimilar conceptually to what’s going on with MVNOs. The cheap ticket experience isn’t just “same planes”, it brings with it a very real likelihood of failure and customers generally go in knowing this up front.
If MVNOs were unusable as often as standby flights are unavailable, the business model would quickly cease to exist.
I find the notion of bragging about any of this for any reason rather odd, but it’s hard to ignore the significant savings over time.
> 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).
> 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.
I covered this in the 2nd half of the quoted sentence. I spent over a month in places like that throughout the US, and didn’t have issues.
I’m not saying issues don’t exist, but I never ran into the described suckage.
Finding a spot out there with poor signal isn’t hard, but that’s a separate issue.
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.
Are we sure that no matter how de-prioritized you are, some data is always available, with reasonable latency? I was just at a large sports stadium last night, and I was able to message my wife to tell her I was on my way home while looking up the best bus to take. I remember that not being possible a few years ago, but I don't know if that's because networks in general have gotten better, or because I'm now paying quite a lot of money for Verizon post-paid.
EDIT: Oh, and I totally forgot about tethering. That can be severely restricted on MVNOs. And, at least for me, I don't need it. Until I need it. Then I NEED it. haha
Tethering is less restricted on MVNO's because often they can't do anything to stop you anyway. I've been tethering on prepaid plans for over ten years now without issues, and without paying anything extra for it.
I've used Mint at large venues. It really depends on the venue what your experience will be like. Usually I'll get at least a few megabits of speed at the venues near me, some places I've gotten practically the same speeds as any other normal time and place, and there have been times where its been almost completely dead data-wise. Usually SMS will almost always eventually get through even on the most slammed networks, and the times where its been effectively dead has died down a good bit since the roll out of 5G. I'll often just switch to the venue's WiFi though, which often gives me pretty good speeds.
As others have mentioned, Mint (and many other MVNOs) has tethering included in all plans without any extras. It counts against your data allotment just like any other data, as it should be.
I haven't used a MVNO at a packed stadium, but I've never experienced complete bandwidth starvation even in large crowds.
I've also never had any problems with tethering on a MVNO; I think the restrictions are only for the "unlimited" plans which don't make a lot of sense (may as well get service from the major carrier at that point). In my experience, if you're paying for x GB per month, you are free to use that via tethering without extra interference from the carrier.
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 getting in international calling and roaming at an affordable price.
For MVNO on Verizon's network, any recommendations? I pay some absurd number for my Verizon plan in the Pacific Northwest because the mountains cause other providers (TMo, for example) to have no reception constantly. Verizon is basically the only choice. However i rarely use it, i spend 90% of the time on Wifi. I just want to be able to get texting/voice SMS/Phone/Data for emergencies (not just 911). So perhaps an MVNO is of interest to me?
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 historically had the edge because of 750 MHz (Band 13)
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
Total Wireless used to be the easy answer here, but VZ just bought them (of course.) However, their plans (Total By Verizon, it's now called) are still pretty competitive: $30/m for 5GB data (2G speeds after that), unlimited T/T.
I've been a customer of theirs for years, and like you, I barely ever use more than 1/2 GB of data. I always preferred the VZ network in my area as well. Not sure if VZ carried over the tradition, but TotalWireless used to run nice Black Friday sales on low-midrange Android phones as well. I highly recommend one of the Motorola phones around the $200-$300 (less on sale) price point.
I’m not very familiar with the dominant internet providers out there, but Xfinity Mobile has been a great experience for me.
If you’re already am Xfinity Internet subscriber, it’s even cheaper, and the app makes switching between data plans dead simple and achievable within about a minute from the app.
I subscribe to the cheapest option, and if I ever need more data, I just bump up the plan for the rest of the month.
As far as I know, US Mobile is the only one other than Verizon-owned Visible that has some allocation of data at equivalent priority to Verizon postpaid customers.
Used to be with Visible up until a few months ago, but their issues with deprioritization started to make it almost unusable. I'd often look at my phone and have 3-4 bars, but nothing would load. Speed tests indicated data in the kilobytes range or just failed.
Switched to US Mobile (which as long as you have a 5G capable phone, puts you on their high-priority QoS tier) and haven't had an issue since.
What about voice quality or prompt delivery of SMS? Its anecdotal but i've had serious issues having delayed SMS on the T-Mobile MVNOs. Voice calls appear have been more spotty but thats harder to measure.
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.
T-Mobile Connect is their existing $15/month prepaid plan comparable to Mint's. It doesn't require a bulk purchase, just keeping enough prepaid balance so that the monthly $15 fee can be deducted.
Last I checked, it had half the monthly data (2GB vs 4GB) and the same unlimited voice and texts policy. I don't follow along closely, so the limits may have changed again.
I wonder if they will reorganize any of that after acquiring 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.
That $20/month 4GiB data (they have $15/mo as an intro rate) Mint mobile plan doesn't include any devices. Whereas $120/month to TMobile is $60 for their base Magenta service (which is still more than $15), but $30/month for an iPhone 14, and another $30/month for a series 7 iWatch (and plan for it). People want shiny new things and sign contracts to pay for them.
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.
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!".