Forum Discussion
5G home internet keeps dropping
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?
Worked so very well yesterday. We are 4 days into our trial.
Today nothing!!! T-Mobile techs state that their customers are experiencing congestion on the network. We live within two miles of 4 towers.
Priority is given to cell phone customers first. 5G Home Internet is not a priority, therefore throttling is applied. Need to increase their capacity to provide seem less uptime connectivity.
Jayster900 wrote:
I recommend either sticking 4g or straight 5G for home internet gateway settings to never have this issue arise again ...
Where is this setting located in the app or web interface, which allows you to choose 4G or 5G only, for the gateway?
I am kind of into tech geek and might have figured why this tends to happen and my personal solution. When I had Tmobile home internet connect automatic 4g/5g is where I had your exact issue. When times of congestion is where signal would drop and try to connect to another tower disconnecting all devices. I had a similar issue with Mobile cell (iphone 13 pro max) when setting up auto 4g/5g connection even when 5g avaliable some arreas not good and sys would lock internet data and would be unusable. I recommend either sticking 4g or straight 5G for home internet gateway settings to never have this issue arise again which again have not had any drops since then been about a week with absolutely no drops, had this happen almost daily on dropped/disconnected internet and understand the frustration. Def not the best service overall bc of deprioritization but with time service will get better, had Tmobile in San Diego since 06' and service back then was absolute garbage. Maybe in the future they will prioritize tmobile home internet bc when it works I can gets speeds of over 270mbps at times
I don't think its signal dropping, its T-mobile corporate greed, as they very quickly try to weed out customers that use too much of "unlimited data". Once you start using more than in my best guess estimate 350gb a month, suddenly you start having "coverage issues" as per customer reps scripts that bean counters wants them to read.
Having the same issues with our T-Mobile Home internet. We have Excellent 5Guc coverage, but I'm having to restart the modem 3-4 times per day. Again, we're in great coverage but keep getting dropped until reboot.
Best advice is to get rid of your T mobile! I have to turn my internet box off and on every day, plus the app won't connect to it ever. They lied about trades and free phones etc… now I'm stuck till I pay off everything. Then Ill have to try Mint.
Have the newer 5G home gateway. It was fine for a few months, the last few months it has been un-reliable. internet connectivity just drops (not slow, drops 100%). This is not just the gateway by cell data on my phones also dies at the same time! Multiple calls into T-mobile, technical tickets and promises of call backs, nothing. Everyone should file an FCC complaint: https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/
heywally wrote:
heywally wrote:
Have had the device two days and it works great! :) To the point that I have cancelled xfinity internet. Not a great test period, agreed, but ….
Seem to have the latest black box, looks new, 4 bars signal strength. Good cell phone signal strength out and about in the neighborhood. We also recently switched cell service from Verizon to T-Mobile.
Speed test varies a bit with the box but generally can get up to 200-300 plus, download.
However, with a boatload of computer hardware/software diagnosing experience in hand, I will not spend a lot of time working with support if I start developing drops, I will just dump the service and go crawling back to Comcast.
Update: I'm actually getting up into the 400-500 range at times. Even when it was showing 40-50 mbps the other night during prime time streaming, everything was running great. It's just me and my wife here in a one story house, with not much concurrent device use. All of our devices, Roku box, iPhones, laptops, iPads, are late models that run fast.
I will update this in a month ….
Any update? You would be probably the only one not having issues...
I have tried all of the solutions on this thread and none worked. Eventually after many tries at calling, I got a local center out of California. They put in a "trouble ticket" to have an engineer go check out the tower (less than a mile a way). Whatever they did, it worked. No problems since. I've put in several calls to find out what exactly was done so I know how to raise it if it happens again, but despite taking messages no one has called me back. I would recommend using the key phrase "trouble ticket" and ask them to open one up and check the tower. Hope this helps. Happy to answer questions.
One possible solution.
It has been about a month since we signed up with Tmobile 5G home service in Oct '22. The model of our black 5G tower is FAST-5688W. Yes, it is sensitive to placement and also the proximity to the Netgear Nighthawk wifi router, causing the 5G internet to randomly drop over the initial 8 days. That is until I moved the Netgear wifi router from 2 inches away to 12+ inches away. It has been almost 3 weeks of reliable internet since. We're very happy that T-Mobile is available in the mountains of Colorado. Subsequently we cancelled our Starlink reservation.
