The Mint Mobile NOligarchy Profile
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NOligarchy Score
33.5
/ 100
mintmobile.com
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Ranked in
Wireless & Telecom Carriers
#2
Subsidiary of T-Mobile
Mint Mobile earns a NOligarchy Score of 33.48 out of 100. As a private subsidiary of T-Mobile, Mint Mobile does not file its own lobbying disclosures or shareholder reports — its scores in Political Access and Wealth Extraction are inherited from T-Mobile’s public filings. The one pillar Mint Mobile controls entirely on its own, Playing by the Rules, is spotless.
Current Pillar Scores
Political Access and Wealth Extraction include disclosures reported at the T-Mobile (parent company) level. Playing by the Rules reflects this company directly.
Political Access
12.4
Wealth Extraction
22.6
Playing by the Rules
100.0
Score history — 23 quarters
Tier bands show where each quarter's score falls — no numeric y-axis needed. The dashed ring marks the year-over-year comparison point. Tap any quarter but the first to see its pillar breakdown.
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Political Access Grade: 12.44/100. T-Mobile, the corporate parent whose political spending is attributed here, channeled over $21 million into federal lobbying and Political Action Committee (PAC) contributions from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 — one of the largest influence outlays in the wired and wireless telecommunications carriers sector.
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Wealth Extraction Grade: 22.53/100. Also inherited from T-Mobile, this grade reflects a 499-to-1 CEO-to-median-worker pay ratio disclosed in a public securities filing — meaning the person at the top of the corporate tree earns in hours what a frontline employee takes home in a year.
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Playing by the Rules Grade: 100/100. No regulatory fines and no public subsidies are recorded against Mint Mobile across the two-year period. A perfect score here.
The Sector Context: Mint Mobile ranks 2nd out of 5 among companies sharing its federal industry classification (wired and wireless telecommunications carriers). With a score of 33.48 against a sector average of 34.1, Mint Mobile sits just a hair below its industry’s baseline — close to the middle of a sector where the spread runs from near-perfect accountability to near-zero. Because Mint Mobile scores below 50, readers looking for higher-scoring alternatives in this category should see the Better Alternatives section below.
The Bottom Line: A Lean Brand Backed by a Lobbying Giant
Mint Mobile sells itself as the scrappy, affordable alternative to the telecom giants — but it is owned by one. T-Mobile’s Washington influence machine, which powers Mint Mobile’s Political Access score, poured more than $21 million into federal lobbying and PAC activity over the eight-quarter tracking period. Meanwhile, the CEO of that same parent company took home compensation worth 499 times what a median employee earned in the most recent reported fiscal year. Mint Mobile’s own regulatory record carries no fines and no public subsidy handouts — a genuinely clean docket — but the political and executive-pay weight of the T-Mobile umbrella follows this brand wherever it goes.
$23 million in political spending
Statue of Liberty · 151 ft
0.5×
Stacked as $100 bills, Mint Mobile's $23 million in political spending rises 83 feet — 0.5× the height of the Statue of Liberty (the statue alone, 151 ft).
A Parent’s Lobbying Machine on the Mint Mobile Scorecard
Mint Mobile is a private company and files no lobbying disclosures of its own. The political influence numbers attributed to this brand flow entirely from its parent, T-Mobile, whose Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) filings are public record. Because Mint Mobile operates under T-Mobile’s corporate roof, the parent’s spending shapes the accountability picture here.
From Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 — the full eight-quarter tracking period — T-Mobile’s federal lobbying spend totaled $21,734,000. To put that in concrete terms: $21.7 million is more than 280 median T-Mobile workers’ annual paychecks combined, spent not on products or services, but on keeping lobbyists stationed in Washington. Spending was remarkably steady — roughly $2.6 million to $3.1 million every quarter without pause, suggesting a deliberate, sustained lobbying posture rather than reactive crisis spending.
Federal Lobbying Spend by Quarter
$21.7M total
$2.6M
Q3 '24
$2.7M
Q4 '24
$2.7M
Q1 '25
$2.7M
Q2 '25
$3.1M
Q3 '25
$2.7M
Q4 '25
$2.6M
Q1 '26
$2.6M
Q2 '26
On top of the lobbying spend, T-Mobile’s PAC disbursed an additional $1,246,000 to political candidates and committees over the same period. Mint Mobile’s own executives contributed a further $53,401 in individual campaign donations, per Federal Election Commission (FEC) records.
No outside lobbying firms were retained specifically at the Mint Mobile level, and no former government officials were identified as revolving-door hires for this entity. The influence infrastructure belongs to T-Mobile — but Mint Mobile subscribers are buying airtime from a company that lives inside it.
A 499-to-1 Pay Gap Hidden Behind a Private Label
Mint Mobile does not publish its own executive pay disclosures — it is a private subsidiary. The CEO pay figures that drive this profile’s Wealth Extraction score come from T-Mobile’s public SEC DEF 14A proxy filing, because T-Mobile is the publicly traded entity at the top of the corporate tree.
The CEO pay ratio disclosed in that filing is 499:1. The CEO’s total compensation in the most recent reported fiscal year was about $38 million — while the median T-Mobile employee earned $76,141. Every Mint Mobile customer paying a monthly bill is ultimately contributing to revenue that flows up to a parent company running a nearly 500-to-1 pay structure between its top executive and its typical worker.
CEO — MEDIAN-PAY MARKER
JANUARY
9:00
10:00
11:00
12:00
1:00
1:10 PM — a median year, earned
2:00
passes the median employee’s full annual pay
1:10 PM · January 1
499× the median employee’s pay
At 499:1, Mint Mobile's CEO earns the median employee's entire annual pay by 1:10 PM on the first workday of the year.
No stock buyback or dividend data is recorded for Mint Mobile itself, which is expected for a private subsidiary — those transactions happen at the publicly traded parent level and are not separately attributable here. What is visible through T-Mobile’s public filings is the pay structure that governs the people actually staffing the network Mint Mobile customers rely on: a gap so wide that the CEO earns a median worker’s full annual take-home pay in a matter of hours on the first workday of the year.
A Clean Record on the Public Docket
Across the two-year tracking period from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026, no regulatory fines, no enforcement penalties, and no public subsidy grants are recorded against Mint Mobile in the tracked sources. The Playing by the Rules score is a perfect 100 out of 100.
This is a meaningful data point. In a sector where regulatory fines are common — for misleading advertising, billing practices, and network reliability claims — Mint Mobile’s clean docket stands out. Whether that reflects genuine operational discipline, the brand’s relatively small footprint, or the limits of what is currently visible in the public record is impossible to say from the data alone.
What the public record shows is what it shows: no fines, no subsidies, no enforcement actions matched to this entity during the period.