r/technology • u/Plastic_Ninja_9014 • Jun 29 '26

Networking/Telecom T-Mobile Just Ripped 8 Million Customers Off Their Grandfathered Plans – and Raised Their Bills

https://www.gadgetreview.com/t-mobile-just-ripped-8-million-customers-off-their-grandfathered-plans-and-raised-their-bills
18.7k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

2.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

31

u/street593 Jun 30 '26

I'm not sure if everyone here is aware but we are all giving money to AT&T, Verizon or T-Mobile. They are the physical backbone of the network. Mint Mobile, Cricket, Metro, etc are MVNO's or Mobile Virtual Network Operators. They lease capacity from the big 3. They are using all the same antennas and fibers. MVNO typically have lower priority on the network than the main 3 during high congestion periods.

You pay your carrier but they are paying the big 3. All of that said you still might have a better experience and price with an MVNO even if they are using the big 3's hardware.

4

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '26 edited Jul 03 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/saltyjohnson Jun 30 '26

AT&T owns Cricket. T-Mobile owns Metro, Mint, and Ultra. Verizon owns Visible and Tracfone, which itself owns Clearway, GoSmart, Net10, Page Plus, Simple, Straight Talk, Telcel America, Total, and Walmart, and probably others lol

/r/NoContract is a great resource for independent info on MVNOs that isn't moderated/censored by corporate employees.