5G home internet keeps dropping

I think it's a thermal issue, and that's likely why T-Mob hasn't fixed it. My gateway had required a reboot almost daily. It behaved similarly to other accounts here in that my connection speed would drop to almost nothing (say 400kbps down) which to a person used to over 50mbps would look like a hard crash, but I haven't seen that yet. My best speed is 60mbps down and I'm delighted if I can sustain 10. Per speedtest, when the problem manifests I see a slight increase in latency but a massive increase in packet jitter, sometimes approaching a full second. Rebooting the gateway clears this condition. Now, thanks to a couple of astute posts here, I decided to test the heat theory. Placing a hand over the unit during normal operation I didn't detect much heat coming out, but when I placed it over an A/C duct directly beneath the sill it had been on, I felt a gush of almost hot air come out the top. This is extremely suspicious and tells me that the convective cooling the EE's had counted on isnt happening.  My gateway hasnt required a reset since i moved it to the top of that a/c vent 4 days ago. There's probably a good reason the installation manual mentions not placing the gateway in direct sunlight and I wonder if the manual's been edited in that regard. I hope others here will replicate and report the heat test. Perhaps then T-Mob will stop stonewalling this issue.

Yeah, I still suspect it's possible the issue was heat related.  The one person I talked to at Tmobile that was most helpful ("Haley") suggested that putting a fan on it is her #1 suggestion, and was surprised when my setup w/ fan didn't resolve the issue.  My gateway (well, both as I was sent a replacement within the first couple of weeks) was out of direct sunlight, sitting in a 3d printed stand which really forced air through it w/ an attached PC case fan constantly on high, and the issue still persisted with complete loss of function multiple times a day.  Despite the fan, I could still feel a small amount of constant heat coming off of the top of the unit, so I question what kind of poor design is happening as no modem/router/cell phone I've ever had has shut down due to heat quite like that… I really question if actually COOLING the unit (ie, colder than ambient air) is the only way to make it viable due to the design, or putting it in a basement where air is naturally cooler (but signal would be poorer).   For me however, I ended up sending it back and signing up with a competing ISP.  I hope Tmobile gets their stuff together, as I'd love for some healthy competition to show up in neighborhoods without any other options!

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. I thought it was because we had too many devices (Xbox, firestick, 3 iPhones). I plan to contact T-Mobile tomorrow. 

Reading through this thread and having the same issue with Trashcan disconnecting daily there is only one resolution that worked for me…. Cancel service and stay as far away from T-Mobile as far as I can.  Terrible service, robotic responses and sales agents that flat out lie.  Toss this experience as lesson learned. T-Mobile sucks!

If a customer has to work this hard to stay connected, then the company should pay them, not the other way around.

I've not tried it in other parts of the house, because where it's at seems to get the best signal.  I'm not sure it's realistic to test it at another person's house, as we need the internet to work and the fact that it works fine 99% of the time makes it tough to catch the 1% of the time that it doesn't.  (Said another way, if I brought it to another location, I'd have to commit to leaving it there for at least several days to see if it it stays up or not.)  

@Fredreed I unplugged it again and did another walk around the house.  Aside from one spot in the house that I get four bars about 5% of the time, and 2 bars the rest of the time, I think it's in the best spot.  Whatever's happening seems to be getting worse, as I'm now up to my fourth crash in two days.  

I don’t think that your router is the problem I suspect that something in your area  is causing this problem and I would call T-Mobile and ask them to send out a tech ASAP to take a look at your problem in person.

Yeah, I suspect that having tons of devices hooked up will make it work harder (and potentially get hotter), but in the end for me I disabled wifi all together and had two Ethernet cables connected to my router and smart things hub respectively, so connection wise it was pretty unburdened. Some people have discussed moving it downstairs or on top of an AC vent. I would highly recommend starting to take notes about when the gateway fails, when you tried different interventions and so forth. While well meaning, I dont get the sense that the folks at Tmobile can do much besides check the connection on their end and make the same suggestions you're already getting. Seems like the people that have found success have done so by figuring out how to keep the unit cool. 

On that note, I wonder if placing it on a timed switch to manually cut the power every overnight would also help, as it would give it 6-8 hours daily to just cool off, but in my opinion the customer shouldn't have to work so hard around a poorly designed product. 

Well, it's now disconnected for the 3rd time today, which is a record. I have a 12v computer case fan that's running 24/7 in attempt to cool the device, and I can't imagine trying to intentionally lower the speed of the modem to try to get it to cooperate. As it is, we don't do online gaming or 4k streaming, so it's not like we're even really pushing it to perform. I guess T-Mobile 5g isn't quite ready to roll out in our area, which is very unfortunate as our area is otherwise ruled by a monopoly by spectrum. 

I was so relieved (and bummed) to do a Google search and find this forum and verify that I'm not the only one having the gateway drop issue after a few days. Yes, turning off power for about 2 minutes and then turning it back on and waiting another 5 to 10 minutes before it fully connects again is not an acceptable "solution".

i permanently work from home now and use this for connecting to a VPN and I'm very successful. The only time this thing seems to drop is within 3 to 4 days and it's usually between 8pm to 9pm (EST) at night. I'm on day 7 of my 14-day "trial" before it officially gets billed to my account, and I'm thinking very strongly this isn't going to make it past the 8th day (tomorrow) as I may be returning it and have to bite my tongue and continue with crappy Spectrum. I strongly agree with @freckle527 that us consumers should not have to go through this song and dance to STAY connected. On the other hand my 5G T-Mobile service has been impeccable for my OnePlus Nord 200 that is basically a "free" phone (bill credits). I think they were so eager to roll this out to America they didn't seriously do enough thorough QA before rolling out this "trash can". At least that's what I'm noticing.