Forum Discussion
Sudden terrible (and strange) data speeds at home, TMo Tells me the towers are "fine"
I'll try to be brief, but have a bit of data to share. First, let me state that T-Mobile supports reps are super nice, BUT cannot think outside of the narrow box they are trained in and really can't help much. I have contacted and been on the phone with them 2 times now for hours trying to figure this problem out. Said they were going to toss it to network engineers and get back to me. Well, problem still exists, no call back, still getting really really awful speeds for no reason that I can think of other than tower or transport issues.
Also, while I am not professing to be an expert in this arena, I am actually a network and infrastructure engineer at a massive/global manufacturing company by trade and have been for 2 decades now so I am very familiar with this space.
The important bits:
T-Mobile Magenta Max (Veteran) Family Plan (so effectively unlimited data and something like 40GB or 60GB tethering, which we never use).
6 Lines (2 lines are in TX and have NO issues at all, the other 4 are in Virginia, we are all having issues at home)
Had the same plan for almost 5 years now and this has never happened.
Live in a rural area, but we have one tower that is .6 miles from my house. It is on a small mountain and I have a direct line of site, unobstructed to it.
I get about 2-3 bars 5G or, if I set it to LTE for preferred, I get full bars.
2 Fridays ago, I was doing some testing of speeds around my property outside. We wrote down download and upload speeds in about 25 different areas around the house. The average of all of these was around 60 Mbps/5 Mbps. This is actually not the fastest, but suitable considering the area. This was on 5G.
About a week ago, we started getting TERRIBLE performance on our phones. I am talking less than 1Mbps-2 Mbps down and like 50 Mbps upload for some reason, consistently. This happens on 3 different android phones (Pixels and Galaxy), and an iPhone 14.
I get the same exact speed range no matter if I force 4G, 5G and no matter where i am at on the property for the most part.
When we go elsewhere and run Speedtests, our speed is as would be expected for the most part. Like in a different city where I work.
When I test via hotspot or tether, again..speeds exactly the same range of speed .
A few other things that may be related (since they seem to be data related)
None of these 4 lines can dial data-related short codes (i.e. #WEB#). We either get a message stating this Service is not available (or valid) your your account type -or- it will spin and then come back after like 2 minutes and say "Connection problem or invalid MMI Code"
When I look at my account online, it says for these lines that we have used 0.00GB of data which is not accurate at all.
Again, these may not be related, but a little bit suspect IMO.
When the reps say they look a the tower, there is no enhancement or upgrade going on. OK, fine but that doesn't mean something isn't messed up. There clearly is something going on. I know the exact tower identifier I am using (again, there is only one here) but they cannot confirm they are looking at the right one bc they say they don't have that info (comeon...really?)
I use multiple sources for testing speed and they are all fairly in alignment. I am not exaggerating when I say I am getting such slow speeds, even on 5G or LTE. I tested just a minute ago and it was 876k down and 27 Mbps up.
It’s not congestion
There is just no way. To start, most people in this part of my county either don't have mobile phones still/yet (farming community) and, if they do, they use either Verizon or US Cellular. Population density is very sparse and we are not a place where people come in and out of and demand changes. So to go from 30-40Mbps average to 1.5Mbps or less in 2 weeks seems super far fetched.
I am frustrated bc I keep getting told that it will get looked into but doesn't seem to be an I never get a call back and the problem remains. I am at a loss on what to do. We rely on mobile phones this far out and this is frankly unacceptable. We are paying lot for nothing it seems.
Does anyone have any advice or suggestions at all?
BBB escalation will get you a bit more than the typical locals, but I have had your message of “we can't guarantee coverage in all areas” often.
I’d almost recommend taking a ‘drive by’ the tower (½ mile away?) and taking a ‘test’.
and similarly network readings.
I did mention above that it took me a CPUC written complaint to get T-Mobile to ‘fix’ the 0.3Mbps 5G service, along with a BBB escalation. 8 months .
Then, after publishing the written response, it was fixed in 1 month. Press them on the issue - tell them you have full bars, but effectively unusable service. 5G 'should be' +100Mbps (according to past reps). 1Mbps at ½ mile is pretty bad, especially with good power level, and usable SINR.
Why I mention microwave … I'm in a suburban area, the local tower here is microwave. A 'bump' (wind, or other) can move these a bit out of alignment - or … something comes in between. For the amount of spectrum available and signal, your results (2 weeks ago) were decent.
Yep, same thing happen to us about an hour ago. Suddenly we go from 5G (3-4 bars) to LTE (2-bars). The fact that I have been on hold now for 40-mins tells me that others are experiencing the same thing. I hope they fix it soon!
I don't think this is what is happening to me. My issues has been going on for a few days and I have full bars LTE or 2 bars 5G with strong signal and can't get above 1 Mbps. It is like we are super throttled or something. Hopefully your issue gets resolved soon.
To be clear, it's not as rural as rural is sometimes taken to mean. It's not "middle of nowhere" rural. We are about 15 minutes from town. Backhaul is not microwave, at least not directly from this tower. I can see it clearly from my property. I have also seen the fiber markers going up the road to the tower. The tower is the only thing up that road.
I have initiated a chat with TMobile on X, but a bit disheartened that they start out with something to the effect of we'll help but understand we can't guarantee coverage in all areas. I even linked them to this thread with all the data that discusses as little as 2 weeks ago, I had much better service. And if I'm getting signal lie I am but 1 or sub 1Mbps, something is up.
BBB escalation will get you a bit more than the typical locals, but I have had your message of “we can't guarantee coverage in all areas” often.
I’d almost recommend taking a ‘drive by’ the tower (½ mile away?) and taking a ‘test’.
and similarly network readings.
I did mention above that it took me a CPUC written complaint to get T-Mobile to ‘fix’ the 0.3Mbps 5G service, along with a BBB escalation. 8 months .
Then, after publishing the written response, it was fixed in 1 month. Press them on the issue - tell them you have full bars, but effectively unusable service. 5G 'should be' +100Mbps (according to past reps). 1Mbps at ½ mile is pretty bad, especially with good power level, and usable SINR.
Why I mention microwave … I'm in a suburban area, the local tower here is microwave. A 'bump' (wind, or other) can move these a bit out of alignment - or … something comes in between. For the amount of spectrum available and signal, your results (2 weeks ago) were decent.
formercanuck wrote:
BBB escalation will get you a bit more than the typical locals, but I have had your message of “we can't guarantee coverage in all areas” often.
I’d almost recommend taking a ‘drive by’ the tower (½ mile away?) and taking a ‘test’.
and similarly network readings.
I did mention above that it took me a CPUC written complaint to get T-Mobile to ‘fix’ the 0.3Mbps 5G service, along with a BBB escalation. 8 months .
Then, after publishing the written response, it was fixed in 1 month. Press them on the issue - tell them you have full bars, but effectively unusable service. 5G 'should be' +100Mbps (according to past reps). 1Mbps at ½ mile is pretty bad, especially with good power level, and usable SINR.
Why I mention microwave … I'm in a suburban area, the local tower here is microwave. A 'bump' (wind, or other) can move these a bit out of alignment - or … something comes in between. For the amount of spectrum available and signal, your results (2 weeks ago) were decent.
And you are right on the money with this. I apologize, because I was wrong. There is fiber going up that road but that could be for something else because there is a fixed wireless provider that's co-located on that Tower. There are indeed microwave antennas on the tower. Interestingly enough the weekend after it stopped working well was when Ophelia came this way and the wind was blowing like crazy. So your theory is very well plausible. They seem to be taking it a little bit more serious in the X support chat so we will see. I'm not demanding that it be fixed ASAP because I'm realistic but I'm just trying to at least get an acknowledgment that there is something going on and that is going to be looked into. That's all.
Woops, didn't mean to choose a best answer yet! I was trying to hit like!
Surprise, surprise. Working with the rep on X was a worthless endeavor. Based on the language used and the not exactly correct English, I assume I was once again talking with the very nice, yet utterly incompetent reps you get when you call on the phone. All they did was create a "ticket" that will inevitably get closed with literally no action taken. This is the same exact thing that has happened 2 other times since this problem started.
It's honestly shameful how terrible all of these large companies are nowadays. Since T-Mobile is quite literally my only option out here, my only choice is to keep paying them for speeds that I cannot even hardly browse the web with or go without completely.
They have proven they will absolutely go out of their way and above and beyond….to avoid doing anything to actually correct problems. WIth all of the evidence presented, can't possibly be bothered to send a tech out to the area to investigate further. Will have to figure out my next move now I suppose since the one place to go that is supposed to help does not.
Reminds me of the backhaul issue i had a few years back, although i suspect not quite the same.
Tmobile deployed 5g in a town of 400, and i filed tickets for the issue, and i was told "network congestion, operating as expected ". 5g speed was 0.3Mbps/6Mbps. This was a few hundred feet from the tower, full "bars" SINR of 30, RSRP -60dBm. Forced a PUC complaint to find out what they mean by congested and working as expected. Came back with "working as expected with t1 backhaul ". After posting that to Neville Rays Twitter, it was fixed in 1 month , and +300Mbps.
Being rural, its also possible that wherever the service is aggregated to, its congested, and/or throttling. It does also seem odd that youve gone from 60/5 to <1/50. It would be easier to 'play with the bands' on Samsung to determine if you're using n71, n25 or n41 or SA vs. NSA. Weak 5g/strong LTE typically indicates either n41 same tower, or n71/n25 further away. Samsung diagnostic + cellmapper / Singal Check Pro would help isolate bands.
Hey thanks for the response. Absolutely could be backhaul issues. I am 100% they are using fiber as it isn't quite as middle-of-nowhere rural, but rural/farming community it its own right. In any event, I can see the fiber going up the road and back towards town on my drive in. There is no one else up there. Not to mention, I as I said before, I was getting really great (for this area) speeds 2 weeks ago.
The most frustrating part of the entire situation is that these frontline people just cannot fix or even understand/know the issues. I feel like actual network engineers, if they knew about the problem and that I wasn't just some idiot complaining my cat videos run slow, that they'd want to actually fix it. Maybe that is just my work ethic, but I would hope so. In any event, I plan on testing a prepaid in a totally different phone to wholly eliminate any potential weird account issues that could be causing throttling or something. Not hopeful this is it.
As far as bands, I was actually doing that testing last night. All bands are basically the same, though there is some evidence that n71 is messed up. Not by much though. Could just be that whatever issue is causing overall speed issues is hitting n71 the hardest. I have verified with cellmapper and SCP that I am only hitting one tower ever.
That being said, n71 has decent stats. (FAR more than what my speeds indicate):
BAND71 (5G)
RSRP -81dBm
RSRQ -12dBm
SINR 8dB
BAND25 (5G)
RSRP -85dBm
RSRQ -11dBm
SINR 9dB
4G is even better, but speeds are honestly near exactly the same, which is very odd:
And this is what I am getting. This is from 1 device, but should be noted that this is experienced across ALL of my devices .The average for all of those would be about the same. The Yellow is Download and green upload. Notice the times, this is literally in as middle of the night as you can get. We have no overnight businesses here. Just a lot of us farmers who sleep at night. Notice the averages at the bottom as well.
But yeah, according to T-Mobile, everything "looks fine" with the tower. Sure...I feel the signal data plus the speeds are pretty definitive that there is something wrong.
Part1of2 wrote:
I don't think this is what is happening to me. My issues has been going on for a few days and I have full bars LTE or 2 bars 5G with strong signal and can't get above 1 Mbps. It is like we are super throttled or something. Hopefully your issue gets resolved soon.
do your speeds improve once you leave your home area by say 5+ miles in any direction?
couple things to keep in mind..carriers usually dont have the full real time status of towers unless they actually own them..which most dont own the actual tower..they must send in tower issue request and then wait for that info to get back to them..same scenario with having someone go out and check them..you might opt to contact TMO through either Facebook or Twitter and have them put in a network ticket for you.
especially seeing as how the other phones on your account in a completely different state are working perfectly fine. so its pointing back at towers/that area
