T-Mobile Home Internet

[MNgopher]

Another mapping source for antennas is cellmapper.net. Particularly useful if others have already mapped your area for your carrier (it is crowdsourced info). Use the 4G level to find local antennas.

As others have stated, the issue we've seen is that this type of service feels even more susceptible to the ebb and flow of people. One location with a seasonal population, it works great when it isn't busy. Try again when everyone is there, and the system can't handle it. Our current broadband connection is susceptible to the same issue, but much less so.

Same note as others - Verizon will not add new users in my areas. T Mobile will, despite users complaints.

We are patiently waiting for Fiber from a new provider to get to us - its in the installation phase. The other fiber company is a block away..., with no plans to expand.

 

[Rand]

We are patiently waiting for Fiber from a new provider to get to us - its in the installation phase. The other fiber company is a block away..., with no plans to expand.

Me too. AT&T fiber stopped about 500ft away from my house.. sends me flyers and tons of ads announcing fiber.. then I cant get it.
But they have 5/50 DSL for 70$ a month after a year with 1TB cap.

no thanks.

 

[mk378]

Verizon Wireless Home Internet is only sold where they have 5G Ultra Wideband (mm wave) coverage. It's not a question of the number of users. 5G UW can serve very dense use situations such as stadiums.

 

[wag123]

Verizon Wireless Home Internet is only sold where they have 5G Ultra Wideband (mm wave) coverage. It's not a question of the number of users. 5G UW can serve very dense use situations such as stadiums.

mmWave is not the answer for this kind of service, it is very short range and doesn't work well (if at all) indoors or through walls.

 

[alarmguy]

Big bandwidth difference between "landline internet" and "landline telephone". One can fit in a 64 kbps (or less) channel, one can be as much as 2gbps.. There isn't enough room in the radio spectrum for all the internet bandwidth the users want.

At the current time and with current technology, maybe.
But I think we are there I’m not sure.
T-Mobile 5g Internet devices in homes with local community antennas that have a wired backbone is what I thought are the plans for home Internet services

 

[blufeb95]

At the current time and with current technology, maybe.
But I think we are there I’m not sure.
T-Mobile 5g Internet devices in homes with local community antennas that have a wired backbone is what I thought are the plans for home Internet services

Verizon has mmWave that's a good way to do proper fixed wireless, it's about as close as you can get to FIOS without having FIOS, that being said though, it's more or less fiber to the curb, so if they have to run fiber that deep, might as well run it to the houses.

 

[JHZR2]

On T-Mobile home internet you will be giving up proven reliability and capacity over Fiber, T-Mobile Home Internet will always have lower priority over cell phone subs, and T-Mobile seems to do nothing to mitigate overselling Home Internet, they will take the money from whoever will give it to them and they don't care if it starts over saturating the service on any given tower, where Verizon Home Internet they won't allow you to order it if they've already reached the subscriber limit in your area. Also CG-NAT on T-Mobile can be a pain to deal with if you need to forward any external ports.

Not trying to argue but my tests indicate that the home internet is faster than the data I’m getting direct on my phone with their go5Gplus package. ATT was intolerable so I had to change.

I haven’t cancelled fios yet…

 

[Skippy722]

I tried it for a bit, it was incredibly flakey. Random drop outs that required rebooting the router/modem was the deal killer for me. Wasn’t any better “bypassing” the t mobile router portion and using my own router. I’m pretty rural though.

I’d give up my 400mbps internet for decent ping and a quarter of the speed in a heartbeat if it meant not paying Comcast another penny…. But I average 1.5-2Tb of usage a month, I don’t know how t mobile would handle that.

They have said home internet users are a lower prioritization vs cell users, something else to keep in mind if you are in a congested area.

 

[blufeb95]

Not trying to argue but my tests indicate that the home internet is faster than the data I’m getting direct on my phone with their go5Gplus package. ATT was intolerable so I had to change.

I haven’t cancelled fios yet…

It looks to me that your phone may have been on the edge of getting 5G with only a single bar, if you're testing in doors the differences in the phone's baseband and antenna design and the 5G Gateway's design may give the Gateway a better advantage especially if it's sat in the optimal location in your house. T-mobile 5G's greatest capacity comes from N41 and on a phone connecting to a 2.5ghz tower can be quite difficult compared to a fixed gateway. When the tower reaches saturation 5G home internet will get the lowest priority, Also I think T-Mobile overall has worse backhaul to the general Internet, Verizon is Verizon and T-Mobile sold off any of the networks that Sprint had and now gets it from Cogent.

 

[Pablo]

Cell at my house (all the carriers) marginal at best. So not a choice for me.

Good thing we have cable.

I get angry because - like trying to conference with a doctor - I can't use my phone - one end (not mine) tries to force everything via cell. That's not going to work, when I know our wifi is decently speedy. I know there is some routing intelligence, and I will turn off cell, turn on wifi calling, etc and still doesn't work on my phone. Laptop works fine. Yet I can be in town and conference with my phone.

 

[JHZR2]

I still have the t-mobile trial internet. Today I connected my work computer, and went through my VPN. I went to fast.com, and it told me the connection is 1.2GBPS. I did the same with my iPhone 15 pro on the wifi, and it tells me it’s about 50MBPS.

Is a fast.com test really looking at bandwidth from their server to my vpn server and not my connection?

 

[proveitwithdata]

I still have the t-mobile trial internet. Today I connected my work computer, and went through my VPN. I went to fast.com, and it told me the connection is 1.2GBPS. I did the same with my iPhone 15 pro on the wifi, and it tells me it’s about 50MBPS.

Is a fast.com test really looking at bandwidth from their server to my vpn server and not my connection?

Try a couple different speed testers, as some of them are designed to recognize the connection and offer a better speed as per advertised.

 

[fantastic]

I still have the t-mobile trial internet. Today I connected my work computer, and went through my VPN. I went to fast.com, and it told me the connection is 1.2GBPS. I did the same with my iPhone 15 pro on the wifi, and it tells me it’s about 50MBPS.

Is a fast.com test really looking at bandwidth from their server to my vpn server and not my connection?

In both of those scenarios it doesn't appear that they are throttling your streaming media. I'd use other sites like speedtest etc to get more speed data. But the real test is when the "Trial" is over & you're on the last day of your billing cycle LOL. You might want to test Fast site on the last billing day now anyways to see what it looks like.

 

[blufeb95]

When I had T-Mobile my experience was that the speedtests could look great, but when you really wanted it to count, like downloading an ISO from Microsoft, or Linux distro ISOs from tons of mirrors I know are fast, or games from Steam, Microsoft, Origin, etc... the real world performance was nowhere near the short burst of the speedtests, almost like T-Mobile prioritizes traffic when they know it's a speedtest, so if you're on a vpn they won't know it's a speedtest to prioritize it and also the VPN may just be slow.

 

[JHZR2]

When I had T-Mobile my experience was that the speedtests could look great, but when you really wanted it to count, like downloading an ISO from Microsoft, or Linux distro ISOs from tons of mirrors I know are fast, or games from Steam, Microsoft, Origin, etc... the real world performance was nowhere near the short burst of the speedtests, almost like T-Mobile prioritizes traffic when they know it's a speedtest, so if you're on a vpn they won't know it's a speedtest to prioritize it and also the VPN may just be slow.

I’m actually seeing this now. Tried downloading a 250MB file while streaming a meeting on teams, while connected to t-mobile, and it gave us about 185kB/s to start, and the download failed halfway.

Switched to Fios, and it’s downloading at 400kB/s with temporary peaks around 600. It also failed partway, but that’s the speed difference.

I then saw similar downloading iOS 17.2 to an iPad. 30+ mins on T-Mobile, 11 on fios.

 

[mk378]

Switched to Fios, and it’s downloading at 400kB/s

That's terrible for fiber. Something seems wrong.

 

[JHZR2]

That's terrible for fiber. Something seems wrong.

Well it’s through a work vpn. Straight up it’s much faster.

 

[JHZR2]

Tried again downloading two 250Mb files, no vpn. One on fios, the other on T-Mobile.

Fios downloaded at 9MB/s. No issues.

T-mobile downloaded between 0.2-2MB/s. Failed twice.

Downloaded fine on Fios at 8-9 MB/s.

Guess that’s the answer.

 

[dishdude]

This is really location dependent from what I can tell. I have both T-Mobile and Verizon 5G home, the T-Mobile works great, the Verizon is just so-so.

 

[fantastic]

I've been using cellular as my primary (AT&T) for 5 years now & I've not had any downloading issues I can think of over that time period. There are times each day that the internet is slowed down when everyone is on at once though. I will say though that Fiber is a more reliable connection & could also help too if you have a battery UPS to run the modem/router when the power goes down but that part can be down with either set-up.

Is it just this one 250mb download that error's out on the cellular internet? Can you try some other downloads to see if they succeed?