Mint Mobile is making moves to try to lock in high value younger users with the low-cost Mint Kids offering. In addition to a lower per-month charge, the carrier says that the plan features full adult oversight.
Mint Kids is priced at $15 per month. It uses parent company’s T-Mobile’s 5G network and features unlimited talk and text and 5 GB of data. Parents — and, presumably, legal non-parental guardians — are able to monitor all communications, including alerts. There are no contracts, so the plan can easily be modified or canceled.
“At Mint Mobile, we know how important it is for families to stay connected. We’re listening to parents who tell us they want a safe, reliable and affordable way for their kids to have a phone,” Andrew Fried, Mint’s senior vice president, Direct to Consumer, said in the announcement. “With Mint Kids, we’re answering that call, offering a plan that’s easy for parents to manage and gives them peace of mind with kid-sized pricing and essential connectivity.”
Youngsters are an exceptionally important market for any company. In July, Statista released research that found 32% of respondents said their kids will have cell phones by the age of 12 or 13, and 21% said they would have one by the age of 14 or 15. With their new Mint Kids plan, Mint Mobile is opening a new revenue stream and responding to a world in which more than 60% of kids will get cell phones by age 13.
The fierce competition for customers goes far beyond the younger demographic. In August, T-Mobile announced that AT&T and Verizon customers can switch to Mint for free and that those taking one line can get as many as four additional lines for free for three months.
