High-Speed Internet Gateway will not lock to 5G speeds (5G21)

I think you will find that both N41 and N71 are 5g bands. The b12/b66 you refered to are both 4g bands. T-mobile does not operate on a pure 5g system and requires both a 4g AND 5g connection simultaneously to function.  The “primary” you see is 4g and the “secondary” is 5g.

The functional difference between n71 and n41 is that the lower frequency band of the one gives a stronger signal at a longer distance.

Seems as though this is still an issue. I am a month in to my internet service with T Mobile. The 5G is amazing speeds and great for what I want to do, but anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour into using the 5G it just switches to 4G (B12 or B71). 5G is on N41. This is a major issue as T mobile service in the rural area I live does not work well. Speed examples= 5G- between 120-250mbps down, 30mbps up, ping is less than 20. 4G- 2mbps or less down, 5mbps up, ping 100+. I have tried another gateway already, same issue. Found the best signal in my house. If I watch the Advanced Cellular Metrics on the app, The 5G signals are all “Good” to “Excellent”, the 4G is “Poor” to “Good”. I am confused

My location to the 2 towers in my area is that I'm at the edge of the frequency range used by band n41. While I always have B66 as my primary signal, when I get n41 as the secondary signal, my download is next to nothing. Speed test usually can't even get connected.  As long as I have b71 ( a lower frequency, longer range) as my secondary signal, then downloads are as good as Spectrum. If I could lock onto b71, I would never consider Spectrum again!

futureray wrote:

Update, this morning I decided just to get the best location for the best signal for the B2 700 Mhz band. Was getting 70 Mbps download and 25 Mbps upload. Said to myself that will fine for now. Then a few hours later, the gateway is on B66 - 5G. But why did I noticed this, the speed was terrible 16/5. So I started playing with the best location for the gateway, I have it hooked to UPS and tried different position in my area where I know 5G works great on my phone. The whole time it locked to 5G. So my initial issue fixed only to read what djb14336 stated by deprioritized on the network. I think he is right.  So even if you are fortunate to get B66, T-Mobile has given this last priority status on the network. I go to test over the weekend, see if it gets any better or worse or loses 5G again. 

What frequency is Band 2 LTE?

Frequency Band of 3GPP LTE FDD mode

I know this is an old thread, but the issue seems to be ongoing.

What I did was get a directional 5g antenna and aim it at the 5g tower (n41 band 2500 MHz) so the 4g (B66 band 1700 MHz) signal wasn't the strongest. 

What I really wish is that the gateway worked with millimeter wave bands (mmWave) as I have a mmWave tower in the boulevard directly across the street from me. Not even my brand new phone uses it, so I'd guess a new version of this gateway supporting mmWave in the near future. 

futureray wrote:

Here we go again, after over a month of connecting to 5G network getting amazing speeds, I thought the issues I was experiencing were over. We are again back to loss of 5G network, which occurred right after the firmware update, 1.2003.03.0178.  Now I get issues during my Zoom meetings, unstable connection. I’m so tired of this BS. I am sick of T-Mobile, and the loss of customer service since the merger with Sprint. Spectrum can’t be worse than this.

Same issue for me after this same exact update.  I was able to manipulate it by disabling Wifi, rebooting, then re-enabling.  This worked for about 3 or 4 days.  Now it doesn’t work anymore.  My speeds are perfectly fine on LTE, but as you said earlier, it SUCKS knowing that you can pull 4x the speed, but can’t lock on consistently.  Hopefully it’s just a simple firmware upgrade.  I know this upgrade fixed VPN issues and Party Chat issues on Xbox, but it’d be nice if they could combine the two and allow 5G.  When I call T-mobile, they continue to tell me someone is doing physical maintenance on the tower.  Uhh… since March some dude has been hanging from the tower?  Someone should probably go check on him.

Here we go again, after over a month of connecting to 5G network getting amazing speeds, I thought the issues I was experiencing were over. We are again back to loss of 5G network, which occurred right after the firmware update, 1.2003.03.0178.  Now I get issues during my Zoom meetings, unstable connection. I’m so tired of this BS. I am sick of T-Mobile, and the loss of customer service since the merger with Sprint. Spectrum can’t be worse than this.

Hi All,

As of right now, it is almost impossible that I know of to always lock in the 5G signal. I have though had this service for a few months now and with my experience working in IT for my local city, I have been able to figure out a few things to help get the best signal you can more times than not. I’ve actually written quite a bit so instead of redoing it all again here I am just going to link the other post below.

Got the Nokia gateway last Wed (May 5). Initially only got 2 of 5 bar signal strength, in metro area that T Mobile said has 5G available (I understand how that goes, “not necessarily where your exact location is” ) Still, highly motivated to get away from years of plunking down 3 figure monthly fee for landline TV and internet (cable co.). Having some skills at using web GUI’s I opened the one for this Nokia, noticed the “wireless” menu under “network” on left pulldown menu, opened each radio (2.5GHz and 5 GHz), I decided to turn off all of those (had to do it on each WiFi sub-SSID, 12 in total-- attention T-Mobile, y’all need to do some serious web page re-design to simplify that! 😉 ) since I have my own established SSID’s, and connected the gateway via ethernet to WAN on my home router. VOILA, it immediately got 3 of 5 bars, rechecked “speed test” on Google and it gets solid 40 MB/sec down, 9 MB/sec up, ping in low 30’s ms. I’m not a “gamer” so ping time isn’t a great concern until it gets over 50-- since Thursday, still solid on 3 bars, band 12 (I realize that isn’t 5G, so if there’s a disappointment, it’s that so far). 

It really is frustrating. I was hoping to be able to get rid of Spectrum, but if my upload speed does not improve I guess I will have to try ATT.

I literally down the street from cell tower (end of the block). The tower shows to have 5G available on it, but yet I still get slow downloads.