I'm having a problem with T-Mobile 5g home internet that has not been resolved despite many calls in to the help line. I've had T-Mobile 5g home internet for almost a month now, and the short version is that every so often the gateway drops the network. When I say "drop the network," I mean to say it throws everything off of the Wifi that it's broadcasting, and anything plugged in via ethernet says "no network found. (To elaborate this point, cell phones switch to cellular data because wifi is gone for them, and computers hardwired into the gateway think that they are no longer plugged into anything.) Turning off the gateway and turning it back on resolves the issue, but doesn't prevent it from happening again. Whatever is happening doesn't seem to affect our connection speed/strength when the gateway IS providing signal to devices in the home, but due to the nature of our work, we need a connection that won't just disconnect randomly. To address this, T-mobile has so far run a bunch of tests on their end, and seem to have ruled out a tower issue (which makes sense, as the tower shouldn't have anything to do with whether or not the devices on the gateway's wifi or ethernet connection get thrown off of the network.) They've sent me a replacement gateway, which is experiencing the exact same problem (3 times in the last 36 hours, in fact). I've noticed that the device gets pretty warm, so I set up a computer case fan as a cooler to force air through the device, thinking that perhaps it's an issue with the device overheating. However, while the gateway is notably cooler than it was without the fan, it has not prevented the issue from persisting. The last thing that I can think to do (and my most recent attempt at resolving this issue) is to plug a router into the gateway via ethernet, and allow the router to handle the wifi/connections w/ devices in the house, and to disable wifi from the gateway all together. Maybe the gateway is simply too overburdened with connections and gets somehow overwhelmed and shuts down, and having the router handle the "heavy lifting" of taking care of all of the individual device connections will resolve it? I don't have a great deal of faith that this will fix the issue (as the gateway also kicks ethernet things off of the network when it experiences this problem), but I'm running out of options/ideas of what to do in order to just get a stable, constant internet service. Is anybody else having this issue, has anybody resolved this issue, or does anybody have any advice or feedback regarding how I might get this resolved so that I can get back to having stable internet?

If you can't get any help from T-Mobile's support staff, take your complaint to the FCC (see my signature for a link to their complaint department). If the FCC accepts it, they'll forward your complaint to T-Mobile who has to respond to your issues. I'm still in the middle of my own complaint without much change in T-Mobile's behavior, but it did give me a chance to speak with someone from T-Mobile's Office of the President. Still waiting to see the results of my pestering, but if they think they're going to blow me off that easy, they're underestimating the stubbornness of a pissed off consumer, haha.

Unfortunately you aren't the only one having these issues. A quick search on this site will show you how many others are experiencing connection drops, speed issues, and general dissatisfaction with T-Mobile's Home Internet service. This thread discusses the overheating issue, but since it hasn't fixed your problem, it probably won't do you any good. https://community.t-mobile.com/tv-home-internet-7/home-internet-overheating-36560There is another thread that talked about connecting the gateway to a router like you talked about toward the end of your message. From what I remember reading, that may not be the solution you're hoping for either. If I can find that thread, I'll link if here too. I know this hasn't helped any, and I wish someone who actually works for T-Mobile would address these concerns. From my experience, constant pestering has gotten me further up the chain-of-command to voice my complaints, but even that hasn't gotten me any closer to resolving my own issues. Not trying to discourage you, but if you have any other internet options, you may consider switching.T-Mobile's Home Internet push, particularly to rural Americans with no alternatives, has been plagued with issues, ranging from inadequate service, gateway device problems, and unethical billing/benefit practices. It's a mess, and if T-Mobile actually cared about its customer base, they wouldn't roll out a service with so many issues. (Here is the link I referenced before https://community.t-mobile.com/other-devices-11/alternative-router-for-home-internet-service-need-bridgemode-33531)

Constantly drops. I changed from the white gateway to the 5g round black gateway hoping to get away from the disconnecting issue...I still disconnect from the internet for extended periods a day, multiple times a day. The app shows that all is well and connected to the internet but that is not the case. This internet is very unreliable and frustrating. I have to manually reload several of the devices that get kicked from the internet. I will be forced to cancel the service if this continues...confidence in the TMOBILE products is deteriorating.

@jdt254 already linked to my overheating post. Even with two cooling fans running when I was using the built-in wi-fi I would still lose my connection every few days. Offloading the wi-fi to a dedicated router helped me get an 18 day uptime. I think I managed to crash it last night with a solid upload and download running at the same time. I'm also only getting a 4G connection. If you're getting 5G speeds it may run even hotter. I would definitely switch to a dedicated wi-fi router though. Rebooting twice a month is much better than rebooting twice a day.

@Fredreed I'm still on hold waiting to report this again. I've asked a number of times what they're going to DO to fix this, and asked more than once if they'll send somebody out. I think I'm about a phone call away from cancelling, as this is eating up too much of my time. I don't understand how my cell phone can have a constant internet connection, but a device that's much simpler can't.

5G home internet keeps dropping | Comunidad de T-Mobile

PrinceSmith32
Newbie Caller
Hace 3 años
jtheiss wrote:

I'm having a problem with T-Mobile 5g home internet that has not been resolved despite many calls in to the help line. I've had T-Mobile 5g home internet for almost a month now, and the short version is that every so often the gateway drops the network. When I say "drop the network," I mean to say it throws everything off of the Wifi that it's broadcasting, and anything plugged in via ethernet says "no network found. (To elaborate this point, cell phones switch to cellular data because wifi is gone for them, and computers hardwired into the gateway think that they are no longer plugged into anything.) Turning off the gateway and turning it back on resolves the issue, but doesn't prevent it from happening again. Whatever is happening doesn't seem to affect our connection speed/strength when the gateway IS providing signal to devices in the home, but due to the nature of our work, we need a connection that won't just disconnect randomly.

To address this, T-mobile has so far run a bunch of tests on their end, and seem to have ruled out a tower issue (which makes sense, as the tower shouldn't have anything to do with whether or not the devices on the gateway's wifi or ethernet connection get thrown off of the network.) They've sent me a replacement gateway, which is experiencing the exact same problem (3 times in the last 36 hours, in fact). I've noticed that the device gets pretty warm, so I set up a computer case fan as a cooler to force air through the device, thinking that perhaps it's an issue with the device overheating. However, while the gateway is notably cooler than it was without the fan, it has not prevented the issue from persisting. The last thing that I can think to do (and my most recent attempt at resolving this issue) is to plug a router into the gateway via ethernet, and allow the router to handle the wifi/connections w/ devices in the house, and to disable wifi from the gateway all together. Maybe the gateway is simply too overburdened with connections and gets somehow overwhelmed and shuts down, and having the router handle the "heavy lifting" of taking care of all of the individual device connections will resolve it? I don't have a great deal of faith that this will fix the issue (as the gateway also kicks ethernet things off of the network when it experiences this problem), but I'm running out of options/ideas of what to do in order to just get a stable, constant internet service.

Is anybody else having this issue, has anybody resolved this issue, or does anybody have any advice or feedback regarding how I might get this resolved so that I can get back to having stable internet?

I'm having the same issue. This isn't going to work for me, especially when I'm not obtaining any logical reason behind the consistent disconnects. It doesn't make sense when the phone data works perfectly fine. It's reasonable to believe if the cellular data is working, the gateway should as well. Now I have a representative who is guaranteeing me it won't happen again. We shall see.
PappyVanWinkle
Roaming Rookie
Hace 3 años
BlueSurf wrote:

I watched this video last evening. I watched it again this morning. I placed my order on Amazon for the Dynalink. I think this is the fix for me.

Yea no it's not going to help this issue. If the Main internet router is cutting off then this will be of Zero use.
PappyVanWinkle
Roaming Rookie
Hace 3 años
How the Hell do we get any resolutions from this absolutely gigantic fail of a support system at T-Mobile? Support Are any T-Mobile people monitoring? Probably not because they don't want to address this issue! I have called over ten times over a month for this issue and keep being told either an Engineer will call back or that my problem ticket number is expired! WHAT THE FK! This has got to be the worst support EVER!!!
N4WWL
Transmission Trainee
Hace 3 años
This seems to be good for stabilizing and improving the WiFi signal when it is connected. But will this prevent multiple dropped connections?
BlueSurf
Transmission Trainee
Hace 3 años
I watched this video last evening. I watched it again this morning. I placed my order on Amazon for the Dynalink. I think this is the fix for me.
N4WWL
Transmission Trainee
Hace 3 años
So I have the same problem with repeated drops. This happens multiple times a day. After a couple minutes the Nokia gateway reconnects, but this behavior is unacceptable. T-Mobile support has been of no help. I have attached pictures of my screen showing the dropped connection and the primary and secondary signal numbers after the reconnect. If someone can decipher these numbers for me I would appreciate it. Gracias.
Señal principal
RSRP -64
SNR -5
RSRQ -17
RSSI -31
Señal secundaria
RSRP -110
SNR 7
RSRQ -13
Loss of signal and reacquisition of signal.
xXnopeNada
Network Novice
Hace 3 años
Holy S(&t I thought it was just me🤣. Just got mine a few hrs ago and I'm ready to punt it. Now I see…. It sounded so good too, 50$ a month 5G. Fml well I'll send it back tomorrow. Not wasting anymore time on this crap.
R_Wolf
Newbie Caller
Hace 3 años
007BondMI6 wrote:

TW I have calle TMHI support a few times to get cell tower details including location, bands,… they had no issue giving me this info so I could make accurate mapping of my area and plot out the best location to put the ant for tower alignment. The waveform ant are excellent you just need to find the best spot.

Well, i ended up removing the product. The Antenna worked create once i changed the angle to look up higher. But apparently T-Mobile did fix the tower as well.
With the Antenna, i was getting a pretty symmetrical connection, like 35m U/D. I went from 3-13m to 30-50m down. Far better connection now. But after this experience, i took the antenna down, posted it on ebay. Working on next steps for this Gateway.

the connection was much better even though the quality was low.
But at the end of the day, the final results were on 4G and the secondary connection was the weaker 5G (650mhz) connection.
007BondMI6
Bandwidth Buddy
Hace 3 años
Deepwater wrote:

@007BondMI6 I found this thread and appreciate the help you are providing to others. I have had T-Mobile home for about two months now and really like it when it is up. Every few days, even if it shows a good connection, internet stops working so I have to restart it. We are not using the wifi on the router because we already have a mesh network. I disabled the wifi on the router a couple of times but every time I reboot it the wifi comes back on and it is a pain turning all of them off, so I have left them alone lately. I live in New Orleans 4-5 blocks from a tower. The home gateway is 7 feet off the ground, next to a window and consistently gets 3 bars. I tried a few other places in the house but was only able to get it up to 4 bars and I have several hardwired servers in the office so was happy with the 3 bars.

Primary Signal - PCI 276 / Band B66 / EARFCN 66711

RSRP -97 dBm Not good does not get dependable until it gets into the low -90s

SNR 5 dB boarderling Ok

RSRQ -14 dB OK

RSSI -64 dBm could be better.

I have seen SNR as low as 1 dB though. Seems to fluctuate

1-4 really bad.

Secondary Signal - PCI 101 / Band n41 / NR-ARFCN 509790

RSRP -99 dBm Not good does not get dependable until it gets into the low -90s

SNR 18 dB Great super

RSRQ -11 dB OK

I was also wondering what you are getting from your primary and secondary signal so I can see how far I am off from a solid connection. Thanks for the help!

Things to flux but here it is right now.
I had to add the external ant to get to this level otherwise I was as bad as you are and same issues as you.
Señal principal
Conectado
RSRP-76 dBm
SNR 6 dB
RSRQ-13 dB
RSSI-43 dBm
Señal secundaria
Conectado
RSRP-80 dBm
SNR 7 dB
RSRQ-12 dB
You should try to move things around to see if you can improve the reading but once you get to the best if it is not enough then only answer is ext ant.
Deepwater
Network Novice
Hace 3 años
@007BondMI6 I found this thread and appreciate the help you are providing to others. I have had T-Mobile home for about two months now and really like it when it is up. Every few days, even if it shows a good connection, internet stops working so I have to restart it. We are not using the wifi on the router because we already have a mesh network. I disabled the wifi on the router a couple of times but every time I reboot it the wifi comes back on and it is a pain turning all of them off, so I have left them alone lately. I live in New Orleans 4-5 blocks from a tower. The home gateway is 7 feet off the ground, next to a window and consistently gets 3 bars. I tried a few other places in the house but was only able to get it up to 4 bars and I have several hardwired servers in the office so was happy with the 3 bars.

Primary Signal - PCI 276 / Band B66 / EARFCN 66711
RSRP -97 dBm
SNR 5 dB
RSRQ -14 dB
RSSI -64 dBm
I have seen SNR as low as 1 dB though. Seems to fluctuate

Secondary Signal - PCI 101 / Band n41 / NR-ARFCN 509790
RSRP -99 dBm
SNR 18 dB
RSRQ -11 dB

I was also wondering what you are getting from your primary and secondary signal so I can see how far I am off from a solid connection. Thanks for the help!