Forum Discussion
Is download speed affected by cellular activity?
I'm trialing T-Mobile home internet. Got the new white 5G gateway. I get 3 bars pretty consistently from a tower about 3 miles away in an industrial area. I've noticed considerably slower download speeds during week day mornings. As low as 40 Mbps. Other times in the day, especially late evening, I get as high as 300 Mbps. I always see 3 bars whether I'm getting 40 or 300. Is this from heavy cellular activity on that tower during normal work day mornings?
This can be from a couple of items.
- As mentioned - deprioritization this hits some areas worse than others. I've been lucky enough to not really have this in my area (suburbia)
- Overall signal quality/congestion. At times, your device may switch from 5G n41 + LTE to 5G n71 + LTE to … LTE only. When this occurs for me, +400/20Mbps → 170/70Mbps, and it is typically due to SINR/RSRP values. If your SINR is low, its either congestion (spectrum) or interference (objects). When I go below 8 on SINR for n41, it often drops to n71. SINR of 15 or better, and I'm rocking. I'm only ~1200' away from T-Mobile tower, but there's a building in between blocking
Off hand what you’ve described is a result of de-prioritization.
T-Mobile Home Internet customers receive the same network prioritization as Heavy Data Users (specifically the lowest priority versus other traffic). As I result, you'll likely experience lower speeds during peak utilization periods (congestion).
See the Open Internet link appearing at the bottom of this page.
This can be from a couple of items.
- As mentioned - deprioritization this hits some areas worse than others. I've been lucky enough to not really have this in my area (suburbia)
- Overall signal quality/congestion. At times, your device may switch from 5G n41 + LTE to 5G n71 + LTE to … LTE only. When this occurs for me, +400/20Mbps → 170/70Mbps, and it is typically due to SINR/RSRP values. If your SINR is low, its either congestion (spectrum) or interference (objects). When I go below 8 on SINR for n41, it often drops to n71. SINR of 15 or better, and I'm rocking. I'm only ~1200' away from T-Mobile tower, but there's a building in between blocking
Man that all sounds greek to me. I'm guessing I can see SINR and RSRP under Advanced Cellular Metrics? I don't follow about 5G n41 LTE etc. Under Advanced Cellular Metrics the top bar has LTE on left and 5G or right. When LTE is underlined I have SINR 3.1 and RSRP -106. When I underline 5G SINR is 12 and RSRP -99. Status shows POOR for all 4 values for those. However right now I am getting download/upload 204/5 according to Ookla SpeedTest. Everything I do seems to work fine at those speeds.
ok - on 4G LTE and 5G items, you’ll want to also look for ‘band’
If your band shows 41 on 5G, the's good, and may also explain why upload is slow. I do suspect that it is 5G n71, and LTE is B2 or B66 (based on RSRP readings).
For 3 miles, that's not a horrible signal, and is probably a clear line of site. Its possibly a combination of:
- Deprioritization
- More 'users' utilizing them spectrum , causing poorer values for SINR/RSRP. Eg. I can see during the day SINR go from 15 down to 8 on 5G and performance go from ~500Mbps down to 380.
I’m suspecting the 2nd more than the 1st, as true deprioritization would make many services almost unusable.
Now I suspect T-Mobile is pulling a fast one. For the first month (during my 15 day trial) I often saw download speeds of 250+ but now that I'm in the second month every time it's less than 100. Usually around 80. Even though I'm usually seeing 3 bars - GOOD connection. Is T-Mobile throttling me now that I've committed to using them?
