JHZR2
Staff member
No it has been different large files over different days. Right now for the first time ever the gateway has no internet connection, yet my cellphone has data.
It’s just not that great, 5G or not.
T-Mobile Home Internet
- Thread starter JHZR2
- Start date
It’s just not that great, 5G or not.
It really varies by location, some people have great success with it, others seem to have a lot of issues. I am one of the lucky ones (for once!)
Verizon isn't as good, and is a back up for us but would never work as a primary ISP...yet my dad has Verizon and it works perfect for him.
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I don’t have personal experience with tmo home internet just that my aunt has it and she’s done nothing but complain and have issues. It’s very spot specific and I’m unaware of the radios the modem/gateway uses but a 5g tmo phone will work just fine have good upload/download speeds but a device connected to home 5g gateway will be slower than paint drying. Tmo customer support told my aunt the home 5g internet accounts are monitored by cellular priority and she’s in an area of congestion where “cellular phones” get the 5g priority. 
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It sounds like you're either on the very far edge of your connected TMobile tower or Heavily congested tower. I think you are leaning more towards Fiber & I'd say that would be a better choice by the sound of your experience. Like I said I've had fiber but switched to cellular internet & fiber wins in speed consistency. There's no network management with fiber either.
Everyone with decent wired options is lucky and probably should go with that! My only wired option is CenturyLink DSL, which I had for years and it terribly slow (less than 1 Mbs up and 10 MBs down). I was on the wait list for StarLink then T-Mobile Home Internet became available in my area, so I went with T-Mobile and have had it for 2 plus years now.
I had issues with the Nokia gateway dropping signal or stopped working until you restarted it which was extremely annoying when I would have to reboot 6 times in one evening! I discovered there are T-Mobile Home internet groups on Facebook, Reddit and a YouTube channel called Nater Tator who deals with cellular home internet and explains the options to make it work better. They were extremely helpful in getting my T-Mobile working fantastically.
One thing that is favored is adding and antennae; I installed one from Waveform (https://www.waveform.com/pages/supercharge-your-t-mobile-5g-home-internet ) it really helped with stabilizing my connection and really increased my upload speeds.
Once I started having issues with my Gateway that T-Mobile couldn't seem to resolve I ended up purchasing a third party router from https://chestertechrepairs.com, you can get them cheaper, but I wanted tech support that he provides, and it is quick! When purchasing it he offers concierge setup (included with purchase price but you have to add it to the cart) so I sent him my IMEI number from the Gateway and all I had to do was put in the SIM card and it was good to go. When I got it going, I had a few questions and I reached out via chat on the website and he responded extremely quick and concise with answers, I was impressed with this.
With the antennae and router my service has been solid and with the router I can switch bands or lock out bands to fine tune it to work well and I no longer have dropouts!
Yes, I spent money, but my only other option would be StarLink which also has an upfront equipment cost and more than double the monthly cost of T-Mobile.
I had issues with the Nokia gateway dropping signal or stopped working until you restarted it which was extremely annoying when I would have to reboot 6 times in one evening! I discovered there are T-Mobile Home internet groups on Facebook, Reddit and a YouTube channel called Nater Tator who deals with cellular home internet and explains the options to make it work better. They were extremely helpful in getting my T-Mobile working fantastically.
One thing that is favored is adding and antennae; I installed one from Waveform (https://www.waveform.com/pages/supercharge-your-t-mobile-5g-home-internet ) it really helped with stabilizing my connection and really increased my upload speeds.
Once I started having issues with my Gateway that T-Mobile couldn't seem to resolve I ended up purchasing a third party router from https://chestertechrepairs.com, you can get them cheaper, but I wanted tech support that he provides, and it is quick! When purchasing it he offers concierge setup (included with purchase price but you have to add it to the cart) so I sent him my IMEI number from the Gateway and all I had to do was put in the SIM card and it was good to go. When I got it going, I had a few questions and I reached out via chat on the website and he responded extremely quick and concise with answers, I was impressed with this.
With the antennae and router my service has been solid and with the router I can switch bands or lock out bands to fine tune it to work well and I no longer have dropouts!
Yes, I spent money, but my only other option would be StarLink which also has an upfront equipment cost and more than double the monthly cost of T-Mobile.
I had some success running my router through the TMobile unit some years back. Not sure if the new units made it more easy or not.
I had questions about that in here, I couldn't remember. YES IT IS A DUMB POLICY, I think maybe to control where and how the router is used. I guess safe to say they do not care what we think, most the population is clueless anyway.
I turned off the wi-fi in the TMobile unit and used my router instead using the TMobile unit as a modem. Im unsure if I had conflicts or not. Thing was I was trying it out for a month and the speeds were way to unreliable. You REALLY need to be near a tower. From that experience TMobile took the area I lived off the "list" and didnt offer service for 2ish years and jsut got an email this summer that they are now offering. I no longer live there though.
Also as far as the past T-Mobile over time updates their modem router and think its a different one now. Maybe 3 time that they have.
Option are good but you need to get lucky with wireless home internet, certainly worth the try for those who wish, nothing to lose, keep current service and try out the T Mobile.
If you own the IMEI device then I doubt it's an issue. It's when your using some random number that might not belong to you it becomes a problem.
JHZR2
Staff member
Stick to wired if you use for work , my work won’t let you even use cellular as it is not considered reliable and seems like you are figuring that out.
JHZR2
Staff member
It’s funny because I was down in the Virgin Islands after Irma and then again after Maria. Everything was destroyed. Cellular internet was all that we had. So even if not reliable, it’s more resilient. There are pros and cons to each.
Not long ago a big tree fell down near my house and nearly ripped the Fios wire out of my house…
That is interesting. I have had Verizon FiOS internet since 2006 and all of the installations in my region are underground feeds even though other utilities come from overhead lines.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Yep, that's how my Bell install is.
Is the ONT inside or outside? Around here AT&T runs the fiber inside the home since they don't offer legacy video service and their phone ATA is built into their gateway, FIOS had in the past ran fiber to an ONT outside, that had an ONT that functioned as both a BPON or GPON terminator and an RFoG terminator with a built in ATA for phone lines, and you could get WAN to your gateway either using MoCA or twisted pair ethernet.
It’s a decent backup and believe what Xfinity actually offers as “Storm backup” offering.
Locally if internet goes into outage the cell internet becomes really slow and barely usable because people swap over to it.
JHZR2
Staff member
They would have had to dig through every yard. Doesn’t make sense in established neighborhood when they already had copper telephone lines from every pole to every house.
Long term more resilient but not always practical I guess.
When they first installed it, they had fiber to an ONT on the outside of the house. It was pretty stupid. It was fiber to telephone copper and coax. The coax went to their modem.
It was stupid because even that old ONT had Ethernet. I called and asked them to enable Ethernet on the old ONT years ago. They did it. A few years later they changed from an exterior large ONT to a tiny internal ONT. they just screwed it to a floor joist in my basement. Ethernet went to it, POTS went to it (not that we use our landline anymore).
Service at my home, on all carriers, isn’t great. Itsnot like I live in the boonies, nor is it in a city location.
But generally signal has never been that strong on any carrier.
But recent speed tests show what we get. And in other places T-Mobile is way outperforming the ATT service i had on a cell. The home internet from T-Mobile can give decent speeds but not consistent enough when dealing with large files and other such data.
Here's my experience
I use non profit T-mobile data sim in a GLI-net spitz 5g router at the house & Tmobile beats AT&T in an all out general speed test, if not getting severly deprioritized, due to tmobile's 5g coverage that AT&T lacks.
What I see is that Tmobile really de-prioritizes me in times of congestion. Often putting my Youtube video's at 360p. While my AT&T 4G LTE plan doesn't deprioritize near as bad as Tmobile and can watch at least 720p. But I don't know if the Tmobile non-profit plans are the same priority as the home internet or not so.
Basically, If you want steady consistency fiber is the better choice. I don't hook up to fiber, for now, simply due to the cost.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
This progression is very similar to how the various Bell entities in Canada did it. My MIL in Nova Scotia got fibre through Bell Aliant. IIRC, delivery was arial, replacing the old POTS line, ONT was a large box with battery backup in the basement, had POTS (built-in ATA) that was connected to her existing internal phone lines, replacing the original POTS NID, and, IIRC, an ethernet hand-off (though I think there was also a GPON fibre handoff) for internet, and an ethernet hand-off for IPTV, using a Bell box, which could also work over wireless from the provided modem.
As time went on, things were simplified for newer installs. My fresh (month old) install is arial, following the same path as the hydro. The delivery is now XGS-PON, because you can get up to 8Gbit. There's no large ONT, just a tiny white box where the exterior rated cable is converted to flexible internal cable, which connects to the modem, that's setup for XGS-PON. The modem provides both POTS and IPTV (over WiFi or ethernet) if you subscribe.
Every house in my neighborhood is over 50 years old and has overhead service for every utility other than FiOS and natural gas. Unfortunately, I was the first to sign up for FiOS in 2006 so Verizon routed the master terminal underground to the corner of my lot using the right-of-way agreement. A new owner moved into the adjacent house last month and Verizon trenched an underground fiber cable from the junction terminal through 25 feet of my property to her house.
My original installation had the large Outside Network Terminal (ONT) mounted on the back wall with MOCA cables running throughout the house to support internet, cable TV and VOIP telephone service. To get FiOS in 2006, I had to sign a binding agreement for Verizon to permanently terminate POTS service in favor of VOIP. In 2018, I discontinued cable TV service and VOIP and upgraded to 300 Mbps internet which entailed replacing the ONT and switching over to Ethernet CAT 6 cables. As stated above, my new neighbor that had FiOS installed last month received the Indoor Network Terminal (INT?), unlike my Outdoor Network Terminal. I'd prefer the network terminal be located in the crawlspace, but don't plan to request a change until it is necessary to replace the ONT.
