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.
Sadly, the more ‘rural’ coverage, the less important that T-Mobile sees it.
Eg. When T-Mobile had an outage for 8 hours in Cambria (power), it took 2 weeks to find out and their response was ‘the generator was broken’, while AT&T and Verizon had backups .
When there’s an issue around LAX, or a busy urban area .. its fixed VERY quickly.
Ironically, YEARS ago, when T-Mobile was upgrading local sites (adding LTE B12), my area turned into a near dead zone, as everything was preferring B12 LTE, and not handing off. I suspect that local teams were in the area checking service with the updates, as I had them check and send a map of a drive test within a few hours. Similarly, spoke with them on the phone, and they dropped the handoff down from ~-120dBm to ~-116dBm, which allowed for handoffs.
Unfortunately, that was years ago. Now its more of file a ticket … wait, and have some generic excuse of "Network is working as expected" … which only means IDK WTF it is , but my equipment isn't complaining or down.
