To answer your last question: because when I go abroad, my phone just works almost everywhere I go. Literally when the plane lands, I get a text message from T-Mobile saying "Welcome to _____" with additional information about my service in that country. Places like Mint, Visible, Ting, etc all charge you per text/minute/MB used abroad which makes them a non-starter since that's usually where I'm going to be using my phone even more than usual.

Haven’t traveled internationally since 2019 but AT&T was always good for a chuckle on landing: “Welcome to {country}! You can continue using your AT&T data at our roaming rate of $25/megabyte.” Then I’d buy a 10GB SIM for $15 on the way out of the airport.

Ting is just Dish Network reselling T-Mobile’s network, which means Ting’s users are prioritized behind people directly paying more (or more valuable) to T-Mobile.

I stick with one of the 3 mobile network operators because I do not mind the extra cost for being higher up in the priority chain (or believing that I am).

https://www.reddit.com/r/NoContract/comments/tn4733/qci_leve...