tmobile home internet speed issues

Trandel_Elent wrote:

I am out in Phoenix, Az. I’ve had these speeds since I started my service.

I’m in Laveen, AZ.  My ISP is a random ISP, Phoenix Internet, and we get about 5 mbps down and not even 1 up.  I saw this gateway ad on Tmobile and reached out to a Tmobile sales rep and was told I’d get no less than 180 down and 34 up.  I plugged in the gateway and got 160 up the first day, since then I'm only getting no more than 2 mbps up.  I’m really losing faith in this gateway and was told by a TMO rep that I have a 14 day buyers remorse.  Probably not going to keep this.

Seriously guys, I don’t know what many of you are complaining about.  We live in a semi-rural area and the best we get first thing in the morning is about 15-20 mbps down and usually less than 1 mbps up.   When we first got this about 4 months ago, we could stream live sports with no buffering, no issues whatsoever.  It freaking rocked!!!!  However, that was short-lived as now it just crawls.  I have rebooted, unplugged, cleared messages, done the technical support stuff, and its still slow.  We have ZERO secondary signal.  When I first got this, I was so hopeful because of my dislike of ATT but it is worse.  The only benefit of the T-Mobile is there is no data cap like with the AT&T version (150gb).  However, the T-Mobile speed makes it unusable except for general browsing only and that’s about it.  For comparison purposes, we have ATT version as well, and we get 35-40 mbps down and 20-25mbps up.  I know its not great but thats the non-satellite options we have in our area. 

Thanks for advice and tips.

It’s a 5G tower. I used a 3rd party cell tower lookup site to verify. No glass view to it though as it’s on opposite side of billing from my room.

Ended up chatting w TNO and found out it’s undergoing maintenance until Monday. TMO is going to contact me after to check w speeds. They agreed I should be getting more than 20Mbps. 

I also realized after that my iPhone and Cellular iPad DL speeds were also diminished, compared to earlier. I had been getting 250 Mbps (5G) until Thursday when tower must have had hardware issue. 
 

so their story holds water for now. 
 

Murphy’s law timing I guess. 

MickeyDAZ wrote:

Maybe I am getting 5G?

 

Mickey, if you’re not showing a signal on the Secondary -- you said that in the previous post that you aren’t -- then you are on 4G LTE. The 5G signal current technology is a non-standalone 4G/5G pair, whereas 4G LTE stands alone on one 4G signal band, prefaced with a “B”. The 5G shows on the secondary signal prefaced with an “n” as is usually either n41 (mid-frequency) or n71 (low-frequency).

It’s a shame you’re so close to the 5G tower though, and not getting faster speeds, but you’re right in thinking it can have something to do with the wall composition of the building you’re in. The gateway works best in a window facing the tower, usually.

So you’re sure this 5G tower is a Tmobile tower? There is a vlogger on YouTube from Phoenix, “Tech Extremist” who travels around testing all the towers in Phoenix, including T mobile.Drop him a line in the comments in one of his videos about Tmobile home internet. He knows the equipment on all these towers and might have an idea of why you’re getting such speeds, or unable to pick up the 5G signal from where you are.

Another thing that can account for a slower speed or not getting a 5G signal is that the density of different providers in a big city and the frequencies they use limits the degrees in a direction to which they broadcast. It’s called a sector. They don’t broadcast 360 degrees. They direct it out in a limited sector, to avoid signal conflicts. So you may be on the opposite side of where the antennas are directed.

Maybe I am getting 5G?

I’m in Phoenix, right next to a 5G tower, but on opposite side, in a concrete and steel hotel.

I’m getting 50Mbps pretty consistently, which is better than hotel WiFi.

Trying to bump up speeds.

 - Does screenshot below with only Primary Signal mean I’m not getting full 5G?

 - Where do I look to find the bands, mentioned below, being used (B12 vs N41, etc)?

I looked around the Web GUI,and iOS app, but didn't see it.  

 - Is there another network utility app I need to use?

Also - Is there a way to bring down Pings?  - I’m getting 300 mS times.

I tried setting DNS on my devices to 1.1.1.1, Cloudfare, but it seems like that needs to be done on gateway.

 - Any way to set custom besides external router?

 - Any other low hanging fruit?

I had the same issue. I ordered the service after being guaranteed I was surrounded by towers that were going to give me amazing service. When I called the first time in June I was told 2 bars on the gateway was so great and was talked into waiting for the massive improvement coming in July. If 2 bars is great, why are there 6 bars on the gateway? Well July came and I called again, I was told my gateway was bad, they were sending me the “brand new” gateway that would fix everything. When it came, it was used and all the wires/booklets were missing. After sitting on the phone for 4 hours, I finally cancelled the service. That was over a week ago and I’m currently on hold AGAIN to find out where the return labels are because I refuse to pay for these “high speed” gateways. I paid for 3 months of non existent internet. I understand people in cities are having excellent connections, but us folks out in the rural areas are clearly looking for a solution to not having options and T-Mobile fell flat.

Trandel_Elent wrote:

Not sure why some of you are getting those speeds, I think the lowest I go most of the time is around 150ish but I avg 450+. Try this though. Connect to the router using the web-based GUI at http://192.168.12.1/.  Check to see what you are getting for the secondary signal cause that is the 5G one. If you aren’t receiving any signal there or it's super low then most likely you are only hitting 4G towers which are nowhere near as fast. 

Both my primary & secondary signals are 4 bars. My speeds are still anywhere from <1 to <10 Mb/s excepr for brief moments of 15-25 Mb/s. Terrible service full of broken promises and lies. Back on 6/17 is when my problems began and I was ‘assured that engineering was addressing the problem’ & that the “modernization would soon be done”. More than two months later, that has been complete bulsh!t.

Im having issues after connecting a router to my Gateway.  I am averaging 200 download and 80 upload when everything is working.  if i connect a router to the gateway and turn on the gateway the secondary signal (5G) will not connect.   then my speeds are 80 down and 8 up when only connected to the primary signal (4G).  if i disconnect the router and reboot the gateway the secondary signal will come back and ill have the faster speed.   Now,  when the gateway is booted up and i have secondary signal.  I can then plug the router into the gateway and it will stay connected the secondary signal for part of the day..  but after a while the secondary signal will drop out again..  then it will come and go but it will stay disconnect more then connected….   then when i have no secondary signal i reboot the gateway without the router connected the secondary signal will come right back…. anyone with the speed problems have a router connect to their gateway?  I can recreate this issue every time.  i called t-mobile and had them watch my gateway as i went trough the steps but they dont have an answer..   I have the latest firm, and have good signal.  

magenta10423868 wrote:

I’ve had this service for ~ 6 weeks and have had very good speeds, averaging around 200 mbps down, 60-70 up. In the last two days it’s been 8-12 down, 3-5 up, and is now unusable. I was planning on recommending this to my neighbors, as we are all forced to use a very expensive cable alternative in my town. I am rethinking this now. If it keeps up like this, I’ll have to fall back to cable. It’s certainly not what they promised me.

 

im having the same issues here in indiana cant get the secondary signal back online and m y speeds are as low as 5mb compared to getting 50 to 80 mbs