Gateway G4AR Router

You are fortunate to be one of the early receptors of this gateway which was only recently released. There's a lot of interest in how it will perform especially for those in need of adding an external antenna. This is the first gateway they've offered that includes external antenna connectors.

There are people within this community much more knowledgable than I, so perhaps they’ll share their thoughts as well.

If this gateway works as all their others do, which I assume it would, it supposedly requires an LTE signal to operate. It will work without a 5G signal, but typically poorly. I believe a standalone LTE router works better when no 5G signal is available.

The gateway will select the tower/bands automatically. There is no way to manually select them with any routers provided by T-Mobile. T-Mobile might be able to selectively adjust themselves if you have issue and give them a call, but I'm not sure exactly what they do. You also can check on Nater Tater's YouTube channel for more information about all the gateways. I believe there might be a non-T-Mobile router he discusses that allows the user to lock on to specific towers, but my memory is a little hazy on that.

In general, T-Mobile has greatly locked down the gateways, so very little customization is possible. This includes very minimal options for the router functions which many users have found frustrating.