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tmhotspot5895
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Re: T-Mobile and being "SO MUCH better than when we had it last
Yeah, I presume that’d be the problem. Lots (LOTS) of noise at sign-up about how T-Mobile has DRASTICALLY improved, AND gained a bunch of <something> from Sprint, and they’re now the absolute BEST for coverage. Even discounting the usual sales “exaggeration”, it seems odd that it’s worked so consistently poorly . Apparently, they haven’t done a lot of that “improving” on the Gulf side of Florida… BTW: Here’s where we are at this time. ON the T-Mobile coverage map. Looks like a huge RED area with at LEAST 4G all around here. So far, the “coverage” on the coverage map has been very optimistic (ok, completely inaccurate) in the locations I’ve been in Florida. So what information can we actually expect to be accurate from the coverage map?18Views0likes0CommentsRe: T-Mobile and being "SO MUCH better than when we had it last
Now at Midway campground in the middle of Big Cypress swamp… Visible (Verizon) has 1 bar - it’s functional but low data - less than 1MB - adequate for email. AT&T hotspot - 26Mbps for the high and it hasn’t been lower than 9. T-Mobile - dead. ZERO bars, no 5G, no 4G, no ANY Gs.28Views0likes0CommentsRe: T-Mobile and being "SO MUCH better than when we had it last
Bought from T-Mobile. This whole topic is just anecdotal - of the “this is what I’m using, this is where I’ve been for the last X weeks, this is how well T-Mobile has worked” - variety. YMMV. The chances are pretty slim that I’m going to run into someone and have a conversation about how their T-Mobile phone does with data… Isn’t that what the COVERAGE MAP is for? To show a detailed view of where you SHOULD be able to expect various levels of performance? Or is that marketing hype too? The favorite excuse with Visible has always been that “you’re in a micro-dead spot and that’s why performance is poor”. And it wouldn’t matter anyhow - if they said it was “great”, it still wouldn’t tell me it actually WAS great - there are people that think Visible is “great”… If they told me it sucked, it would just further confirm that T-Mobile service doesn’t match what you should be able to expect from their coverage map. It’ll be interesting once I get into Big Cypress and/or the Everglades to see which, if any of the services still works.22Views0likes0CommentsRe: T-Mobile and being "SO MUCH better than when we had it last
Not that I’ve noticed. There are lots of people walking around with cell phones, but I have no idea what network they’re on. I know the AT&T hotspot works FINE. Visible sucks, but Visible sucks most of the time ‘cause it’s Verizon’s left-over garbage. Even so, at least Visible, on the OLD, cheapest possible ZTE Blade A7, will run the TV on SD, which the T-Mobile phone hotspot won’t do. I figure it’s either the phone or T-Mobile. It’s a Samsung Galaxy S22, and we’ve had Samsung devices several times in the past - they’ve all been more than adequate, so I suspect the problem ISN’T the phone. That leaves T-Mobile. I figure it MIGHT be acceptable if the phone doesn’t work in the middle of Monument Valley or the middle of Death Valley, but jeez, I’m in the middle of urban sprawl in Fort Myers, with the most major highway on the Gulf side of Florida nearby, and this thing is a data paperweight. Give or take 100 feet, the black dot is where the RV is. The huge, pink road about a quarter mile away is Hwy 75. Anyhow, I’m just whining… It made sense to move the phones (except for the data phone) from Visible to T-Mobile for a couple reasons. I less than half believed the BS about the drastically improved coverage when we went to T-Mobile this time, so I’m disappointed, but not surprised that the marketing hype was BS.11Views0likes0CommentsRe: Brand new to home Internet and hoping to improve speed
It’s now been 28 days with the Arcadyan box. No crashes. A few slow spots every day, but NOTHING as wretched as the Sagemcom box. For the most part, software downloads - usually between 200 MB and 1.5 GB, have been fast AND have not disrupted other network-hungry concurrent operations. SO FAR, it’s been good enough that we terminated the service with the 17-year-old DSL. Next comes a bigger challenge. I’ll be in Florida, going down the Gulf side, across the Big Cypress and Everglades and up the Atlantic side. I”ll have the Samsung S22 on t-Mobile, the Visible data phone on Verizon, and my Nighthawk M1 on AT&T. I’ll be able to SEE where I have service, where I don’t, and how good it is.11Views0likes0CommentsRe: Brand new to home Internet and hoping to improve speed
I have three towers that are close - the closest is about 2 blocks and line of sight. Another is downtown, max ¼ mile and again line of sight. The third is a little farther away but probably an extra 2 blocks. I’m not sure which one provides the very high speeds I would see periodically with the 2 Sagemcom boxes. Support SAYS it’s the one that’s 2 blocks away. I don’t know what tower the Arcadyan is using - it never hits the speeds the other boxes did, but it also doesn’t fall on it’s face a dozen times a day and go below 1 Mbps. Like yours mine is “almost always +30 Mbps”, though it’ll get down to 20 for the lows. I can live with that. I’d prefer NOT to see numbers down below 10 Mbps, though SO FAR we haven’t had an abnormal amount of buffering when streaming, and large-ish downloads on my computer have been reasonable. What I’ve noticed today is that the average speed over the last 22 hours (midnight last night to 10 pm) has trended DOWN from a starting average of about 160 Mbps to less than 60 Mbps by 10 pm. T-Mobile has said a couple times that these gateways need to be power-cycled weekly or at least every other week. It may become a Saturday morning thing to pull the plug for a minute. BUT, the box has now made it through THREE days with no dreadful numbers and no crashes. If it makes it into tomorrow, we’ll keep it and shut down the ancient DSL.7Views0likes0CommentsRe: Brand new to home Internet and hoping to improve speed
After a lot of continued problems, wasted conversations with support, and getting contradictory information from most everybody I’ve talked too, we were ready to dump the thing and stay with the SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD DSL. Last several conversations went pretty much the same “The box isn’t communicating with the tower.” “Except at THIS MOMENT the box is working fine. I have Internet and it’s between 300 and 400 Mbps.” “But the box isn’t communicating with the tower.” “So how WOULD I know this?” “OH, you’d have REALLY POOR PERFORMANCE!” (This while the thing has been running between 300 and 400 Mbps for the last hour after the last time it crashed and rebooted) The support person was DETERMINED that the second box was “bad” and wanted it replaced. SO, back to T-Mobile for ANOTHER Home Internet box... This time the local T-Mobile replaced the Sagemcom box with an Arcadian (not sure of the spelling). It appears to work about the same, but SO FAR, we're not getting the extremely fast 400Mbps speeds OR the extremely SLOW .25 Mbps speeds. AND, it's on day THREE and it hasn't crashed yet. Yesterday is pretty typical. Only have buffering a couple times and download speeds, at their slowest, are generally at about as good as the ancient DSL. I'm hopeful this thing will continue working. If it stays up through tomorrow, we'll keep it. I still don't understand the astronomical variability from minute to minute, especially in the middle of the night when there should be very few people doing anything heavy, but as long as it stays high enough to keep things usable I'll just ignore it. A mechanical question - is this thing prone to overheating? I had a box with a 12V fan in it blowing up through the bottom of the Sagemcom box 'cause I read in here that keeping it cool would keep it running (turned out to be untrue), but if this thing NEEDS the extra cooling I can use the fan, though it annoys the domestic associate who has ears like a bat and hates fan noise of any kind...2Views0likes0CommentsRe: Brand new to home Internet and hoping to improve speed
Interesting…….. Things had not changed… Here’s what the graph looked like a couple days ago. A normal day here - higher and wildly fluctuating at 5 a.m., slowly degrading. Then, about 2 p.m., it falls on it’s face and only gets above 10 Mbps 4 or 5 times for the next EIGHT hours. It GRADUALLY improves after 10 pm. Tuesday, had another conversation with t-Mobile support Tuesday morning, where THIS person essentially contradicted everything thing the person from LAST week said, except for stating clearly and repeatedly that this was NOT the performance to be expected. And that MINIMUM download speed should not be below 37 Mbps and max out around 130 Mbps. Which numbers would make me happy. OK... But, he created another ticket, and THIS time he stated repeatedly that HE would call me back Thursday to see how things had improved… Continued monitoring yesterday. This morning, after the normal overnight series of points around 60 with a few falling on their face, THIS happened… Between the 6:26 and 6:36 points (I suspect at 6:30), a jump to numbers in the mid 400 Mbps range. Which seemed odd given the mediocre performance to date, but I DIDN’T look the gift horse in the mouth. Unfortunately, it only lasted ‘til about 8 a.m. when it fell back on it’s face to 7 Mbps. I confirmed the high speed with speedtest on the computer AND on a cell phone. Somebody remove the throttling and/or deprioritization for 90 minutes? Any idea what’s going on?5Views0likes0CommentsRe: Brand new to home Internet and hoping to improve speed
I’ve continued monitoring the Home Internet speeds. I presume everybody must be on their way to grandma’s house ‘cause last night between 7 and 10 it DIDN’T suck as badly as usual. It only got down to below 1 Mbps 3 or 4 times in the 3 hours, and mostly seemed to be between 4 and 7 Mbps with the monitor taking a reading every 10 minutes… FAR from stellar, and far from what I was told by support that I’d be getting on Thursday, but I’ll see what happens Monday or Tuesday. If I can’t put the Verizon/Visible SIM in the spare Moto G7 Power, and performance continues to be bad, and support doesn’t come up with anything, the box will have to go back to T-Mobile by the end of next week. I was told by the support person that they’d credit the month of service AND guarantee me I could return the device beyond the 15 days, but they never sent me anything confirming that, so I’m guessing it was “inaccurate”...4Views0likes0CommentsRe: Is there anything "special" about Home Internet? Data care? device? T-Mobile?
Just got off a chat with Visible (the subsidiary of Verizon we were with), and they insist the phone is unlocked… I haven’t found a list anywhere on T-Mobile that tells me whether a 2020 (or maybe 2019) Motorola G7 Power would be compatible with T-Mobile or not. But if it’s actually unlocked, it doesn’t work.19Views0likes0Comments