Forum Discussion
Cell spot interfering with regular wi-fi
I received my cell spot yesterday and plugged it in the way it says to and it seems to be working great. I now have full service where I had almost none before. However, trying to run any apps on my television today seems to be near impossible. They keep coming up with the fact that they are experiencing network issues or are extremely slow and continue to pause to buffer. That is not an issue I've ever had before, so I'm wondering if the cell spot could be interfering in some way with my internet service. If anyone has any feedback on this, I would appreciate it!
What I would suggest doing is running a speed test with the cell spot plugged in and without it plugged in and seeing if there is a difference. I would also make sure that you have enough bandwidth to support streaming on multiple devices. There is always a chance that a device on the network is doing updates like a computer as a example which would use some of your limited bandwidth and could be the cause of your issues.
The cell spot how ever is unlikely to be the culprit unless other people are useing the device to stream video and such. As things stand there are to many factors for me to peg a issue but I would start with the basic trouble shooting steps, including powering off the router for 40 secs and then turning it back on. Hope the info helped./
magenta5512501 wrote:
magenta4287944 I hope you read this. I worked on this for another couple of hours today and was finally able to fix the issue. I did call Tmobile support and they were polite, but not able to solve the problem. I changed my Netgear router to use channel 6 instead of channel 3, then updated my router's firmware. After doing this I still had issues (was getting about 0.5 mbps down as opposed to 25+ mbps down when the CellSpot was turned off). The fix turned out to be súper simple and made me feel kind of silly. I simply moved the CellSpot so it was 3 or 4 feet away from my router. I am betting they were interfering with each other because I literally had them sitting side by side when I was having the problem. I hope this helps you or someone else having the same issue.
I know this is 4 years ago but I had to say thanks. Moving the cellspot away from the router solved my problem.
Ditto. Clearly the cord provided from Tmobile is like 5 ft long. The installation video from T-mobile shows the router adjacent.
BTW: My fiasco started as my home internet became unusable. My TMOBILE home internet (grey tower) was running 80-100 mps download before. it started into the crapper after a few months. Dropped to 2-20 after cell spot install.My ping went from 50 to 1000 or not at all.
Spent hrs with Tmobile tech service (include 6 dropped cell calls in the process), We started with reboots of the internet box and now a refurb “new” tower (about to put that in).
Importantly my cell phone service (BTW on my new Tmobile Apple 11 and 12 iphones) started to drop calls about the same time as my internet quality decayed. Thus I expect it is a Tmobile tower issue.
Believe the cell spot is no better than the internet coming in-which in my case is from the same "degraded" cell tower. The cell spot then degraded my internet download by 80%.
Can someone tell me how they moved the cell spot 2-5ft away from their router when it has to be connected to the router via internet? I am still in the first 2 hours of setting up my cell spot and I am supposed to start working from home and can't even access my internet via Ethernet cable to my router to get online.
So grateful for this thread. Set up my cell booster, home cell reception improved but wifi speed went to NOTHING. Couldn't even run a speed test. Found this thread, moved it about 2 feet away from router (it had been right next to it) and internet speed is back to normal.
Hola Everyone,
I was having the same issue. I moved the T-Mobile booster about 5 ft away and now both the Internet and my cell service work great. Hope this helps!
magenta4287944 wrote:
Basically, if I unplug the cell spot, three internet in my house works fine. If the cell spot is plugged in, it doesn't. This was T-mobile's bandaid to a whole other issue, so at this point, I just don't want to even deal with them anymore. I'm going to send the cell spot back, deal with the fact that I have crap coverage where I live and that all my calls go directly to voicemail when I'm on Wi-Fi in my home, and when I've paid off my current phone, I'll move to a more reliable carrier! Thanks to everyone for your suggestions.
THIS!!! I am soooo regretting my choice to leave AT&T. I paid more, but now I now why. My service has been TERRIBLE since day one. I can't get a cell in my house, so they sent me the cell spot and now my wifi is terrible. Got a brand new phone for my daughter and she can literally NEVER get a cell. It's awful!
I am experiencing some very issues. When the Cell spot is connected to my network, many of my WiFi connections drop repeatedly. My WiFi devices are virtually unusable.
I just got a new OnePlus 7t that has the 600mhz frequency. This means that my device is now picking up towers it didn't before. It doesn't want to stay connected to one but bounces back and forth causing me to lose cell service. The same thing happens when using WiFi calling. Hence the T-Mobile Cell Spot.
If I unplug the spot, WiFi works. If I plug it back in, it breaks.
I will try moving the cell spot away from my router to see if this corrects it.
I ran a series of tests using both Ookla Speed Test and Wifi Infoview. I ran the test in a room on the other side of the house, separated by a brick wall,
In Wifi Infoview the quality of connection improved from mid 70s when hotspot was adjacent to router, improved to 95+ when separated by 12 feet
My speed test results dramatically improved both in ping and in in Mbps (Ping 50-75 improved to 10-13 when separated ; bandwidth went from 2-3Mbps to consistently 20-30. This is on a Lenovo Yoga C930 with an AC wifi antenna connecting to a Linksys 1900AC router, and my ethernet connected cable service typically running 130-150 Mbps.
Conclusive proof to me, don't put your cellspot near your router.
Or anywhere near your beds.
Afternoon, I found this post because I was having the same
problem. I moved the cell spot away from the router after noticing how close it was and now my cable and cell spot a working fine.
Try it, hope it works for you.
This fixed it for me, just separated the two units and went from 1.2 to 47
