Since running for President back in 2020, entrepreneur Andrew Yang has managed to keep pretty busy. On the political side, he helped form the Forward Party (which has endorsed candidates in nonpartisan races as well as both Democrats and Republicans who adhere to the party’s core beliefs). Now, he’s founding a new mobile provider with a key gimmick.
This month, Yang and partners officially launched Nobile Mobile. The idea behind this particular carrier is that it encourages customers to use their phones less by offering rebates to those who don’t use as much data. In short, the company claims that it will pay you to use your phone less (this according to an ad that finds Yang walking around New York City and knocking smartphones out of the hands of those wasting their time on social media and the like). So how does this all actually work?
Looking at the Noble Mobile site, their “No-Bull Plan” features unlimited data, talk, and text at a cost $50 a month. However, it also offers what they call Data Dividends. This means that customers who use less than 20 GB of data per month can earn at least some cashback — with the amount of cashback increasing as monthly data rates fall.
Noble offers a calculator on their site that helps further explain this whole Data Dividend thing. From the looks of it, customers who use 16 GB of data can earn about $3 back per month. Meanwhile, those who manage to consume less than 4 GB will earn an estimated $14 per month back (lowering their effective monthly cost to $36 per month). For what it’s worth, Noble notes that most people use less than 10 GB per month in data, meaning they’d likely earn $10 or so back from this plan.
Of course, as you may have guessed, it’s not like Yang is building his own mobile network. Instead, he and his partners are using a model called Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO). In other words, Noble is a brand utilizing an existing network — in this case, T-Mobile. Some other well-known MVNOs include Mint Mobile and Cricket, while a couple of notable new offerings include Klarna Mobile and Trump Mobile (so I guess Yang wasn’t the first political figure to launch one).
By the way, another interesting feature of Nobile is the option to let your cashback grow. Those who opt to keep their Data Dividends in their Noble account will earn 5.5% annually on that money. However, customers also have the option of applying cashback to their next bill, withdrawing it, or applying it toward other upcoming redemption options.
Although Nobile Mobile sounds a bit gimmicky, I do think there are some good ideas here. I also personally think it’s funny that Yang’s network offers something called Data Dividends, considering that his Universal Basic Income plan was known as the Freedom Dividend. As for whether I would actually sign up for Nobile… I’m not currently in a position to do so, but I am curious about the possibilities. In fact, as someone who’s mostly at home and on WiFi, I suspect that I’d be able to earn quite a bit of cashback from the plan.
Even if I won’t be signing up for Noble Mobile myself at this time, I am definitely interested in seeing how this venture goes. Could it even climb to the heights of Mint? I’m not betting on that, but, as always, I do wish Mr. Yang the best of luck overall.