purchasing used 5g gateway for home internet

I think it wouldn't make any difference where you get the gateway. If you get it for free from T-Mobile, it will come with a SIM that identifies it on the T-Mobile network. At the end of the summer, you'd cancel the service and drop the gateway off at a T-Mobile store.

If you buy your own on eBay, you'll still have to cancel the service and possibly return or destroy the SIM.

Unless I'm mistaken, you'd still have to pay a disconnect fee to a traditional ISP, even if you only use it for a couple of months out of the year.

I'd call Sales at T-Mobile and tell them you want to subscribe to the T-Mobile Home Internet service but you'll need to suspender it after you leave your summer home. See what they suggest. I've never had to deal with a scenario like yours, but I'll bet you're not the only T-Mobile customer that has this environment.

Another thought I just had: why not subscribe to T-Mobile Home Internet at your summer home, then pack it up and take it back to your residence for use there? That way you'd never have to return it. The downside of this idea is that any Internet device in your regular residence will be cut off from being online as long as you're away, and that may pose a problem for you.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Imo i wouldnt buy it on ebay. Tmobile gives it free. An how did the seller get it. Stolen?. 

The seasonal suspension route costs $10/month, plus it didn't work so well this last winter.  They ended up charging full price the month following suspension.  After a few call run arounds the rep indicated home internet isn't a seasonal suspendable line within the system. They ended up crediting the account so good of them. 

T-mobile just needs to treat the home internet for what it is and not a "line" where a customer would care about keeping the issued phone number.  Maybe I'll just cancel this fall and send back the gateway.  I liked the thought of having my own gateway to possibly eliminate any delay in turning back on service in the spring.  

My concern with cancelling at the end of the season is less about keeping the phone number and more about keeping your slot in the area for internet. The T-Mobile Internet availability is based off of bandwidth availability. If you cancel one year and then more people activate over the winter, when you go back the next summer there may not be any more slots available, and you could miss out on having T-Mobile Internet at that location. Ideally, we would like every home to have our internet, but we also want to make sure the experience is good so we limit the number of activations to prevent overloading the towers. 

I double checked our seasonal suspension requirements, and I don't see anything about Internet lines not being eligible. You can suspend the line for two 90 day periods within 12 months. That means that you would pay full price for half the year and $10/month for the other half for that line. I don't know why the person may have told you that it was not able to be suspended unless you were trying to suspend it for a third 90 day period. 

Hope this is helpful. 

wildman wrote:

Imo i wouldnt buy it on ebay. Tmobile gives it free. An how did the seller get it. Stolen?. 

Some people are getting charged by T-Mobile after returning their gateway and UPS delivery confirmation.  Perhaps stolen from the return center. LOL

Certainly you should buy eBay and put your data SIM card in…

Would be nice if you could pay by the gigabyte.

Thanks for all the replies.  I think I'll stay away from the EBay listings for picking up my own 5g gateway...I too was suspicious of the legitimacy of how/why these units are in the market if TM doesn't sell them, except for when they charge you for not receiving the return when an account gets closed.