Why do the major cellphone service providers like Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile benefit from owning “cheap” services like Visible, Cricket or Mint?

Question

Are these services extremely throttled? Are they on separate towers where the service isn’t as great? Please help me understand.

In: Economics

Answer 1

For at least 3 reasons

Telecom infrastructure is crazy expensive, the more revenue streams the better, it’s essentially free money for traditional telecoms.

They’re serving a customer base that otherwise might not use their services in anyway

And last but not least, it’s a potential pipeline for future acquisitions, that’s speculation though it makes sense.