Maybe those inside the borders of a metro area could really benefit from these low cost third party carriers like Mint?
My experience toward the outer edge of a suburb of a metro area hasn’t been great. It got the job done-ish but service was a substantial step downward from being directly with Verizon. I did save over 30$ a month and i was staying with the Verizon network via a Verizon third party reseller. Just demonstrably IME not the same. Ultimately my experience is: if you can comfortably afford it, stay with one of the big three. IME life’s too short for ‘just ok’ cell service