T-Mobile Home Internet

[JHZR2]

I grabbed a Black Friday special for t-mobile 5G internet. I live close to a major city, though the cell service on all carriers isn’t great.

The deal is permanent $35 (tax included) 5G home internet.

I’m not yet a believer, but it is half the cost of our Fios with landline that we can’t even keep plugged in because of endless spam calls.

The T-Mobile service is very location specific even in the home. Somewhat height dependent IME, but certainly side of house dependent.

The first time I set it up on my kitchen counter:

Moved it around:

For reference, this is our Fios connection:

And this is my ATT cellular internet on my phone:

I’ve been consistently disappointed with ATT on all my properties.

This AM I checked T-Mobile again.

Not a bad speed but upload is still pretty slow compared to fios. Ping and whatnot also not great.

I also don’t yet have the T-Mobile unit connected to my home router, which is like to keep. I assume that will add latencies/slow things too.

What do I need to know/be concerned about relative to the t-mobile internet? Will the slow upload affect online video games that my oldest has started to play? Is the upload speed going to be an issue for anything else?

The cost is compelling, but I’m not sure I fully understand the downsides. Any thoughts?

 

[RhondaHonda]

Neighbors up the street got this but T Mobile says not available for my house yet. They are 200 yards away but 60’ higher in elevation. We have limited options here so I’d be thrilled with your speeds, especially for that price.

 

[Rand]

try near a window that has LOS to the tmobile tower.
Also let it be for a little while sometimes its not instant for them to switch bands.
If you have a good enough signal it should switch to a higher frequency (larger bandwidth) for more speed.
if you have worse signal it should use a lower frequency lower bandwidth.. for better connection

yes latency will affect some games more than others.
something like cs:go will be much more affected than World of tanks blitz.

 

[proveitwithdata]

Did you get the free 50" TV as part of the promotion as well?

 

[skyactiv]

I have it. Sucks I'm paying $50 a month for being a loyal customer. I had a new home built last year and don't have cable or phone lines in my home and plan to keep it that way.

My thought is T-Mobile will get out of the 5G fixed for life price when 6G comes out around 2030. They will discontinue 5G home internet, send you a free 6G replacement router and up the price.

 

[dishdude]

I've had it for a year and a half or so, it's faster and more reliable than Cox was....at half the price!

That $35/mo - is that with a T-Mobile phone plan on the account with it?

 

[mclasser]

After Comcast raised my rates last year, I decided to try out T-Mobile Home Internet. The technology is cool no-doubt but at least in my experience, the service didn't work out.

Speeds were great at first but then I started experiencing major slow downs / disconnects. Moving the gateway around the house would fix it for a bit but then it'd return. Replaced the gateway twice, also to no avail. Their tech support was pretty useless and would always say my signal levels looked great on their end when something was obviously wrong. Ended up canceling the service after a few months. My opinion is that they oversold the service in my area and their network couldn't keep up.

As much as I dislike big telecoms, I went back to Comcast after getting a new promo rate under my wife's name and all's been well since. I mainly wfh now so having reliable internet is crucial.

 

[Pew]

Lower upload is typical but that won't affect your kid's games as long as everything is stable. The bad side of it is that you get the lowest priority on the network so time slots of high traffic like after work/school tends to be poor.

 

[Rand]

I will likely move to municipal(county?) fiber when it comes online in a few years.. until then bending over for spectrum.
I play their game to get the best price which is still terrible.. and the upload.. well my phone beats it handily..
but the download is smooth and latency/jitter pretty good.

 

[Kansas_Ron]

I purchased a magicjack and use if for my home phone. I know nobody uses a home phone. But it is very cheap. The call quality and clarity are great. I have no spam calls. The cost is very reasonable.

 

[fantastic]

Anyone w/Tmobile Home please visit fast dot com & post the speed here. Trying to see if they throttle video.

 

[alarmguy]

@JHZR2
I suspect this isnt going to work out for you long term. Not enough signal.
One thing for sure, I do encourage people with high internet rates to try it. Nothing to lose, everything to gain. Worse that can happen is they return the unit.

We tried it in our house some years back in South Carolina (posts are in here someplace) Really tried everything, first few days were very encouraging then downhill from there. T-Mobile support at the time was great, even had an engineer check our elevation at the time and position to the tower and suggest one specific corner of the home. We were very impressed with T-Mobile tech support though I guess it was "new" at the time.

Just could not get the signal high enough to hold reliably. To give an idea, we had a tower about 1 mile straight line AND another 3 miles. The further one had UC service on it. In fact with my T-Moble iPhone was able to drive near the tower and get 700 Mbps on my phone. (even that I posted some place in here, just dont remember what year at this point *LOL*)

That was then, as we all know, things are being upgraded at breakneck speeds. In fact after our situation T-Mobile stopped offering it in that area. We moved from there in SC to NC just this year. It was ironic because after we moved, we got the email that service is now available at our old home location in SC. Being it was a more "rural" but massively growing area. I knew it was just a matter of time, there was lots of room on the nearby tower for additional antennas. I suspect that they finally got around to our tower.

In many areas of the country people do get reliable high speeds, I think everything is a matter of time. Good luck!
I cant help wonder if the day will come where landline internet becomes as outdated as the landline telephone. Only makes sense.

 

[kschachn]

Anyone w/Tmobile Home please visit fast dot com & post the speed here. Trying to see if they throttle video.

It did shoot over 1 gig a few times during the test.

 

[Wrenchturner44]

I grabbed a Black Friday special for t-mobile 5G internet. I live close to a major city, though the cell service on all carriers isn’t great.

The deal is permanent $35 (tax included) 5G home internet.

I’m not yet a believer, but it is half the cost of our Fios with landline that we can’t even keep plugged in because of endless spam calls.

The T-Mobile service is very location specific even in the home. Somewhat height dependent IME, but certainly side of house dependent.

The first time I set it up on my kitchen counter:
View attachment 191164
Moved it around:
View attachment 191165View attachment 191166View attachment 191168View attachment 191169

For reference, this is our Fios connection:
View attachment 191170

And this is my ATT cellular internet on my phone:
View attachment 191171
I’ve been consistently disappointed with ATT on all my properties.

This AM I checked T-Mobile again.

View attachment 191172
Not a bad speed but upload is still pretty slow compared to fios. Ping and whatnot also not great.

I also don’t yet have the T-Mobile unit connected to my home router, which is like to keep. I assume that will add latencies/slow things too.

What do I need to know/be concerned about relative to the t-mobile internet? Will the slow upload affect online video games that my oldest has started to play? Is the upload speed going to be an issue for anything else?

The cost is compelling, but I’m not sure I fully understand the downsides. Any thoughts?

Here is website that you can use to identify towers near you. https://www.antennasearch.com/

Some site locations even have Google Earth Images of the locations. Be aware though that 5G base stations can also be located on utility poles, and other smaller more densely located structures. Also be aware that both 4G and 5G can be highly load balanced (read signal throttling) during times of high use.

 

[97K15004WD]

After Comcast raised my rates last year, I decided to try out T-Mobile Home Internet. The technology is cool no-doubt but at least in my experience, the service didn't work out.

Speeds were great at first but then I started experiencing major slow downs / disconnects. Moving the gateway around the house would fix it for a bit but then it'd return. Replaced the gateway twice, also to no avail. Their tech support was pretty useless and would always say my signal levels looked great on their end when something was obviously wrong. Ended up canceling the service after a few months. My opinion is that they oversold the service in my area and their network couldn't keep up.

As much as I dislike big telecoms, I went back to Comcast after getting a new promo rate under my wife's name and all's been well since. I mainly wfh now so having reliable internet is crucial.

Yeah, same thing with us. Used it for a while, but it just wasn't reliable. Turned in all the equipment last year as it was so hit or miss.

It's crazy though. Now our "cable" provider (we have internet only) is offering phone service in competition to T-Mobile. What's crazy to me about this idea is how are you supposed to call and report an outage if you have a mobile phone and internet service offered by the same company?

 

[Rogueman2016s]

I have it. Sucks I'm paying $50 a month for being a loyal customer. I had a new home built last year and don't have cable or phone lines in my home and plan to keep it that way.

My thought is T-Mobile will get out of the 5G fixed for life price when 6G comes out around 2030. They will discontinue 5G home internet, send you a free 6G replacement router and up the price.

2030 is not exactly around the corner

 

[blufeb95]

I tried it out a year ago, I found that the equipment just sucks, I don't expect consumer gear to run 24/7/365, but not being able to go more than 48 hours without a restart was very very annoying, Went with Verizon 5G Home Internet, most of the hiccups I have with it are in the middle of the night (1-4AM), maybe they're doing software updates to the tower radios or something, or it's when updates are forced out to phones but other than that it usually works pretty good and you can actually have external ports whereas T-Mobile is more of a glorified hotspot service and you're stuck behind CG-NAT.

 

[kschachn]

I tried it out a year ago, I found that the equipment just sucks, I don't expect consumer gear to run 24/7/365, but not being able to go more than 48 hours without a restart was very very annoying, Went with Verizon 5G Home Internet, most of the hiccups I have with it are in the middle of the night (1-4AM), maybe they're doing software updates to the tower radios or something, or it's when updates are forced out to phones but other than that it usually works pretty good and you can actually have external ports whereas T-Mobile is more of a glorified hotspot service and you're stuck behind CG-NAT.

Idk why mine works so well. I don’t recall ever intentionally restarting it and the speeds are consistent. Perhaps I just have a good tower near the house.

 

[JHZR2]

I’m

Here is website that you can use to identify towers near you. https://www.antennasearch.com/

Some site locations even have Google Earth Images of the locations. Be aware though that 5G base stations can also be located on utility poles, and other smaller more densely located structures. Also be aware that both 4G and 5G can be highly load balanced (read signal throttling) during times of high use.

I tried that site in my phone and it was barely usable. And there’s like 650 towers in 3 miles.

The throttling does concern me. If we are throttled, Or deprioritized, that’s an issue. Fiber that’s the same speed bidirectional is good. Of course I’m not sure if I really use the fast upload speed, even in video conferences or whatnot.

But saving 50% is enticing. I’m tempted to try to hook the house router to it for a few days and see what happens.

As densely populated and close to major population centers as I spend most of my time, I’m not exactly happy with ATT or VZ.

 

[blufeb95]

I’m

I tried that site in my phone and it was barely usable. And there’s like 650 towers in 3 miles.

The throttling does concern me. If we are throttled, Or deprioritized, that’s an issue. Fiber that’s the same speed bidirectional is good. Of course I’m not sure if I really use the fast upload speed, even in video conferences or whatnot.

But saving 50% is enticing. I’m tempted to try to hook the house router to it for a few days and see what happens.

If you have fiber don't mess with anything else, just pay for the fiber and don't worry about pleeb wireless or HFC services, if I could get Fiber I wouldn't even mess with any of these services, I switched because I just got tired of Comcast, they are so infuriating to deal with that I just wanted to stop giving them as much money as I could, and Verizon was a good compromise, I now only have Comcast at another house that I cancel every year and go back for the cheapest promotion because all it does is monitor the smart thermostat.