Disable secondary (5G) connection

magenta10597872 wrote:

When the Home Internet router connects to the secondary which is n71 band, I get horrible service. When the router is using only the primary, the service is good. Is there any way to disable the 5G connection?

It's strange that my 5G phone has excellent data speeds whilst the router is terrible. Perhaps it's using a different band?

I do not know a way of disabling the 5G connection on your home internet gateway, but if you were using T mobile's earlier model 4G modem/router, that would disable it. If I were you, I'd try some more tricks, some simple things you can do. While it is true some people can get a faster connection on 4G, the majority get a 2x speed on 5G, just as your 5G phone works so well.

While it is true that some model phones in particular have great 5G receivers/antennas on board, the only reason I can think of that is obvious that your 5G phone works so much better than the home gateway is in some areas, cell phones are given priority signals over the home internet gateway, but that should be only during peak traffic hours, not all the time that I know of.

I just got my first 4G smartphone last month, and the home internet last week, so even though I’ve used computers for 50 years, I’m kind of a smartphone ignoramus, but I’ve been reading about it furiously for a few weeks now.

If you knew that your 5G phone is connected to certain bands (or primary band only in the case of 4G), I would feel more confident about recommending that you try different gateway placement -- up high, down low, in the basement, whatever you can think of. Ignore the bars (signal strength) and try different placements doing speed tests. In a window toward the tower.

If you are, let's say 2 miles away from one tower, and 3 miles away from another, those towers are close enough that it's possible your phone is connecting to the better tower, and the gateway is not. Yet if you put the gateway in a window nearer to that better tower, then the speed might change.

The n71 band is T-mobile’s low frequency, high range (reaches dozens of miles) 5G band which is paired with a 4G primary in their non stand-alone relationship which is the current state of 5G, It is my understanding that T-mobile is replacing some of the 5G n71 band equipment with the newer mid-frequency 5G band n41.

The n71 band doesn’t have as high a speed range as the mid-frequency and high-frequency (mmWave) bands, and but it can be fast when you are very close to the tower. 

If you didn’t have the 5G phone getting such good 5G speeds, I would say in some weeks you can probably expect you might be getting a n41 signal with considerable improvement.

If you tell me what model phone you’re using, well, iphone or android, I can find a free app for you to download that can tell you your bands and tower locations.

I have to go out this morning, but ordinarily I’m around a lot.

Also when posting here, just for my education, it would be helpful to know what average download speed people consider bad, good or excellent.For some people good is 30 and for others good is 300. It's just helpful to know what speed range you're in. Also, if you know how far the tower(s) are from you. Lastly, signal strength, either as in the GUI or on the top of the gateway is good to know, because these things behave differently at different signal strengths.