After about two years on Mint Mobile the verdict is in and it is not great. Mint runs on the T-Mobile network, which sounds more promising than it performs in practice, especially in New York City. The issues are not limited to underground either. Even in normal street level areas the signal can be surprisingly unreliable for a major metropolitan city. Underground in the subway it is essentially a non starter. Looking around at everyone else browsing and streaming without issue while your signal disappears is frustrating, and the price savings stop feeling worth it when the service is not there when you actually need it.
Visible by Verizon is worth a serious look. It runs on Verizon’s network, which has consistently better underground and building penetration in New York City, and the pricing is significantly more reasonable than a traditional Verizon plan. It is worth noting that Visible has been known to throttle speeds after heavy usage and can experience congestion during peak hours. That is a legitimate concern. But here is the thing. Even with occasional throttling and congestion, actually connecting to a network is the baseline requirement for any carrier to be useful. Mint may advertise better data limits on paper but a generous data allowance means nothing if the signal is not there to use it. Connecting slowly is still connecting. Not connecting at all is just a phone bill.
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