Forum Discussion
Speed vs Capacity
I just spoke with an HONEST tech about my problems over the entire time I have been a customer. We had a candid and fruitful discussion about speed vs capacity (bandwidth). Finally, someone honest and sincere at TMobile!
Too much marketing and money $$$!!!! has, is, and will be spent on convincing customers that speed is KING> it is NOT. Capacity is. Bandwidth is. Your top SPEED in a Ferrari may be 200 MPH, but if your track (CAPACITY) is 30 ft long … all that speed is useless. You will plod along at regular or even SUB PAR speed. Marketing has ruined 5G and the entire market. Wake up people. Demand capacity first! Wonder why you can't get consistent speeds, and the network is down all of the time? Well, it is not speed that is the issue. It is capacity. That unlimited speed Autobahn your traveling on at 150KPH just hit a traffic jam of more people than the road can handle! You are going nowhere fast. In fact; sometimes you will get nowhere at all. Turn off the engine and camp for the night, you are stuck for the duration.
Coverage!!! Another marketing favorite. No we are just jamming more people on the same network capacity. slower speeds and connectivity issues abound because the infrastructure is NOT there.
Be the UNCARRIER you claim to be TMobile, and market and spend your money where it is really needed and ( I promise you ) will be appreciated! Capacity. Pretending you can support all of your subscribers (All carriers not just TMobile) even most of the time is becoming difficult to pull off when customers can see the real problem. Too many people on the equipment you have. Speed and coverage are not supporting your customers. Reliability ( not registered as down time! ) should be a measure of consistency! For some reason it is not. I could care less if your network is up 99% of the time if 70% of the time it is so congested I can't connect at a consistent speed and quality of service.
All of these factors are important too be sure. But, as my Pappi used to say: if your foundation is crap… your house is crap. Well Tmobile (and all other carriers out there)… your foundation is Crap! How about fixing that before you expand coverage and "speed"? More subscribers only mean less capacity at this pace. Invest better. Market better. Educate better!
Unfortunately all carriers market the same way and the worst thing Tmobile has done in my opinion is the Home internet plan.
It's good for the rural areas of the USA where broadband isn't available but in larger markets it drains the bandwidth availability for the cell phone users.
As the old saying goes … TANSTAAFL.
Higher frequencies = shorter range (in general).
Higher frequencies ≈ more ‘available’ spectrum.
T-Mobile - where 5G is deployed has a lot of ‘midband’ 5G spectrum and a decent amount of low band.
Most areas that I've visited that have 5G (5G UC in urban, 5G extended range in rural) don't have capacity issues. A couple of years ago, in at least one area, T-Mobile put the cart before the horse, deploying 5G in a rural area, but still had only T1's as backhaul. That was fixed 8 months later after a CPUC complaint.
