Forum Discussion

BIGJOHNJTT1979's avatar
BIGJOHNJTT1979
Network Novice
2 years ago

Signal is in and out

we live 1.8 miles from the tower. When we got on Tmobile cell and home internet several months ago, we got on the home internet around 90-100mbs and no less than 20-30. Now, we will get 30-40 mbs for 15 minutes then .2-.4 mbs for 15-30 minutes. It’s on and off on and off. We have called several times ands last time they said it was a coverage issue. How can you have coverage one minute and none the next then coverage again?

  • formercanuck's avatar
    formercanuck
    Fiber Fanatic
    2 years ago

    You’re probably talking to someone that is just not wanting to do the ‘due diligence’ to determine much, but pick from the standard answers listed.

    90-100Mbps is decent and typical for ~1.8 miles.

    I suspect that you’re hitting one (or more) issues:

    1. Throttling (time of day/deprioritization) at the tower/aggregator
    2. Band switching (not so likely)  between usable band 2/66 on LTE vs 12 or loss of n71/n41.  These can actually be determined using the T-Mobile home internet app and the home page showing ‘quality’ (poor/good/very good/excellent) then going to the ‘More’ tab at the bottom and selecting ‘Advanced Cellular Metrics’ - there’s a tab for 4G LTE and one for 5G.  Almost always you’ll see ‘poor’ on RSRP.  Focus on the SINR, CQI and BAND results.