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 ...
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.
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.
