5G Internet Showing Incorrect Location

Interesting.  Since the end of September TMobile has seen the light and has me in San Diego where I belong. Maybe enough people complained and it wasn't worth the time to explain the foolishness to thousands of customers. Hopefully this is the case.

I, too, am a resident of Charlotte, according to TMHI. In fact, I live 130 miles from Charlotte in another state. I am constantly bombarded with ads for the Charlotte area, including the nauseating ads for NC political candidates. We have enough of that on other media around here, without having to put up with the maison de merde which is NC statewide politics. (This is not a political statement - I hate all the ads. If those candidates are the best that can be offered, I would move to another state. Hmmm….I did.) 

Expo34 wrote:

This could be fixed but T-Mobile does not want to spend the time to do it.

Each home router has a MAC address and all they need to do is assign that MAC address and static IP that is assign to that tower.

I have worked in IT / networking for 30 years, so them saying it can’t be done is BS and frustrating.

 

1000 percent this.  They could even tie the "address" you are required to use to sign up, to the Mac Address of the Gateway, and use that for proper geolocation.  It's literally a line of code.  

Shoot.  I guess maybe I got lucky when I did it.  I guess there are compromises with all ISPs no matter what.  For now, I am happy to be diverting money away from my former cable company with which I had little satisfaction.  Good luck with your future internet connections.

If only that would work. Have rebooted many times. Also, Verizon has the same issue for anyone thinking of switching. 

Restarting the gateway returned me to the proper location.  This is not ideal, but it worked for me to get back to my local channel line up on Fubo.

BobT wrote:

The fault really lies with content providers that rely solely upon third party IP-address based geolocation services to determine location for local channels delivered. IP-addresses say nothing about your physical location other than your country and who owns the IP-address block. IP-address based geolocation services have been inherently inaccurate but worked well with traditional wire-line based services due to the manner in which those carriers assigned IP-addresses by region. Mobile Carriers  (with an emphasis on the mobile) don't have that luxury. Neither do satellite internet providers where your point of presence is thousands of miles away at a Gateway typically.

Nevertheless. some content providers have figured out how to properly address location and provide more flexible mechanisms to endure the proper home location. YouTube TV stands out as a prime example of this. FUBO, Hulu and other that rely on third party IP-address  based geolocation services should follow YoutTube TV's lead.  

@syaoran  provides the short form answer.

I get what you are saying. However, prior to January 2024 it worked the way I expected, that is I'm located just north of San Diego and my IP address was in San Diego,  not los Angeles 

I absolutely hate that my location always shows as being somewhere in the Charlotte area, 100 miles away.  Any time I search for products from stores like Target, Home Depot, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, take your pick, I get results that are far from home.  I hate it and T-Mobile Customer Service tries to Gaslight me and say that it is correct.  Charlotte isn't even in the same state!!  I live in a large Metropolitan area and the nearest Best Buy isn't 100 miles away!!

OK, we know that the problem is that TMobile assigns its users IP addresses from all over its service area and it assigns a new address every time the router connects to a tower, so your IP address is not an accurate indicator of your location.  But, the third party geoplocation services that websites use to determine your location, act as if the IP address is an accurate indication of your location.

The solution is for the geolocation services to recognize TMobile IP addresses and treat them specially.  They must already be treating cell phones different than wired ISPs.  They must be queried for their GPS data.  The geolocation providers could establish a system with TMobile to ptovide your correct location.

TMobile must know what tower you are connected to and its location.  (They are going to use this data to catch people who travel with their TMobile routers so they can charge them an extra fee.)  So why can't TMobile provide a location service to the third party geolocation providers?

I suggest that we begin contacting advertisers.  When you get an ad for a business that is clearly too far from your location, contact the advertiser an let them know that they paid for ad that was wasted on you.  They will complain to their ad agencies who will start looking for more accurate location data from the geolocation providers.

Phil

OK..let’s roll!… and.. hey ..let’s be careful out there.

ddahc77 wrote:

We are having this issue on the regular now with fubo and location not being where we are and not being able to get the local news. Doesn't seem there is a resolution so when I went on the hunt for other options, looks like I am going to try out slingtv because they have an option to allow for a physical antenna on my house to obtain my local stations and they load straight to the slingtv app. This may not be very helpful for rural locations, but there is a way to find the local channels dish locations and get a distance. 

Has anyone else tried this and have positive/negative remarks?

You Tube TV gives you a setting to tell it which metro area you want.