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

gpmaz
Transmission Trainee
Hace 3 años
I was having internet disconnects at least once a day. Purchased a WiFi reset device called Keep Connect. It pings Google I think on a regular basis and if it detects the internet is down it will power reset whatever is plugged into it. It will also email/text you every time it happens. For some strange reason I've only had it reset once in the last month since I installed it. Obviously its not a solution for the problem, but its a decent band aid.
iTinkeralot
Bandwidth Buff
Hace 3 años
I have neighbors here that were on CenturyLink and it was horrible, unreliable service. I recommended T-Mobile to my neighbor across the street and now they are happy campers. We had no other good option here but the T-Mobile home internet solution. Hughes Net was out of the question and StarLink is too expensive. Not sure StarLink is all that great in the area anyway.
¡Éxitos!
jwc1926
Roaming Rookie
Hace 3 años
iTinkeralot wrote:

T-Mobile keeps records of calls and usually will provide a ticket number. If you made another call they could look up the information based upon your account information as they record pretty much everything.

That is good you reached a personable support person that really wanted to help out. I had a similar experience so I know there are some good ones and some that are just clueless. If you have the Arcadyan router vs. the Nokia the configuration options are very limited in the Arcadyan so support needs to ramp up on their game to target what they say to each customer.

The problem is what to do in the interim for internet service if you want to stay with T-Mobile and avoid any sort of contract that ties you up. Sort of between a rock and a hard spot.

Well, the tech support person said they'd personally call me back in May/June, so I can get their name then. If this works out, I will definitely take the time to make sure T Mobile knows who this person is. Anyway, I have the Arcadyan router. I couldn't even get into the router to check the settings when I was on the phone with tech support, so I don't know. I'm back to my old provider for the moment, but T Mobile just told me to hang on to the Arcadyan router without charge for a couple of months while they do tower upgrades. I'm fine with that. Right now my internet service with a different provider is absolutely terrible (16 Mbps download; <1 Mbps upload), so I don't have a lot of options. According to my current provider, to get a line up to my house and take advantage of the blazing fast speeds, my portion of the cost would be around $5,000. Forget it. So, I was really banking on the T Mobile 5G home internet getting me up in the neighborhood of 40Mbps up and down. That would be totally fine for what I do. We stream a lot, though, so satellite is out. I guess I'll just wait until summer and see if the tower upgrades solve our problems.
iTinkeralot
Bandwidth Buff
Hace 3 años
T-Mobile keeps records of calls and usually will provide a ticket number. If you made another call they could look up the information based upon your account information as they record pretty much everything.
That is good you reached a personable support person that really wanted to help out. I had a similar experience so I know there are some good ones and some that are just clueless. If you have the Arcadyan router vs. the Nokia the configuration options are very limited in the Arcadyan so support needs to ramp up on their game to target what they say to each customer.
The problem is what to do in the interim for internet service if you want to stay with T-Mobile and avoid any sort of contract that ties you up. Sort of between a rock and a hard spot.
jwc1926
Roaming Rookie
Hace 3 años
Could I make a recommendation to T Mobile as well? There are tons of videos on YouTube about how to take you 5G device apart and hot wire it with an external antenna. Why not just put an external antenna jack on the device and offer an external antenna package for additional cost to customers who have connection issues?
jwc1926
Roaming Rookie
Hace 3 años
Well, I spent about 30 minutes on the phone last night with a very nice and seemingly honest tech person who basically told me that based on my location, the salesperson had no business selling me the 5G home internet service. I was getting two bars max, and speeds were all over the place--from around 40 Mbps all the way up to around 300 Mbps, but rarely. Very erratic. Then the whole connection would be lost after about an hour, and I'd have to unplug the device and plug it back in. Super frustrating. As it turns out, in my case the signal is just too weak, even though the tower is only about .7 miles away to the northwest and I am up on a hill. Pushing back a bit, I discovered from the tech person that upgrades are scheduled to come to the tower in my area in May/June. I'm guessing the salesperson figured I'd spend a few months trying to figure out the problem until the tower is upgraded; then everything would be okay. Anyway, I asked if I could get the 4G LTE device in the meantime, and she said they are no longer offering that. So, I asked if there was a way to adjust the settings of the device only to grab the 4G signal, and she said I could go to 192.168.12.1 and use the admin login credentials on the device tag and set it to 2.4 GHz and not 5 GHz. She did not seem sanguine that this would solve my problem, and I couldn't even login to the device anyway, so I just gave up. They are temporarily suspending my account while I hang on to the device. The tech person said she would personally call me back when the tower is upgraded, and we can try again. We'll see. I'd be gone and would never come back to T Mobile if it wasn't for this nice, honest tech person. I wish I could remember her name. She needs a promotion.
jwc1926
Roaming Rookie
Hace 3 años
Is this happening to anyone with a strong signal, or is it just weak signal folks?
Elox
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?

My Q-Link ZTE 5G phone is worthless. It can neither make nor receive calls within my home because of metal siding and the settings show it is connected to my router but still cannot make or receive a call. Completely unreliable.
unusual777
Transmission Trainee
Hace 3 años
I was sent out the new black box . This has resolved my dropping issues. I was buffering for a while losing 5g to 4g with it. I moved the box to a new location in my home. The new software show the signal from the tower with your gps location. I also gained a bar to good on connection with the new goods

also for anyone wanting a work around the keep connect box works great fro checking your connection then auto resetting your modem. You can find it on Amazon. I sent mine back hope i don't need it again.

Knocking on wood….
Pachulo
Newbie Caller
Hace 3 años
Mine drops daily 1-5 times and has consistently done so for 2 months now. I am on my third gateway. T-Mobile support has not found anything that prevents it but restarting always solves it.