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?
My gateway internet dropped out at least 20 times yesterday, sometimes within minutes after it reconnected. T-Mo customer service said it's because there is maintenance work going on at the cell tower I connect to and that it will take another several weeks to complete. I find it hard to believe this is the cause of repeated dropped connections that have been going on for over a month now. My phone service is fine, just the internet drops repeatedly using the gateway. There must be a better solution.
@Lextor Yes, definitely a T-Mobile problem. I, too, switched from Verizon and got good speeds the first month. Rebooting the gateway doesn't seem to fix the issue, however. And I have consistently had 5 bars. Calls to T-Mobile have been fruitless. The last rep I talked to said the drops were caused by tower maintenance, which would be completed in a month. Really? My T-Mobile phone service works fine. But that seems to be the standard response. And it's now been several months that I've had dropped WiFi connections. Really bad.
N4WWL wrote:
The last rep I talked to said the drops were caused by tower maintenance, which would be completed in a month. Really? My T-Mobile phone service works fine. But that seems to be the standard response. And it's now been several months that I've had dropped WiFi connections. Really bad.
It is a scripted response they use to end the call/close the ticket without anyone really looking into it. They don't care about making a diagnosis, just follow the script and hope you buy it. It is bad.
Yeah, that's what I figured. I'm amazed that so many people seem to have the same complaint but no one knows how to get T-Mobile to pay attention and fix it.
This service is so HORRIBLE!!! I can't even cancel it. After factory resetting the gateway, I couldn't get it to connect to the tower; even if it did, it would drop whenever any device connected to it. I called customer service to cancel. They asked me for a pin. I had never setup a pin. I had to go to a store where they promptly said they don't take care of pins. I called back customer service and a rep asked me to have the store identify myself and they will reset the pin. I visited the store again. This time my pin was reset. The rep on the phone said it will take 24 hours to process the return label, but there was none in my email after 24 hours. I called customer service again and they said they need to transfer me to the home internet line and I was on hold for over 30 mins.
I am going to file a complaint with the FCC and also contact a law firm. This sort of treatment and product service is begging for a class action law suit.
I've had this service for 2 months now. In fact paid my second bill 2 days ago. Started about a week ago maybe 3 or 4 times a day, however today Ive lost the gateway 17 times. I power cycle my router on a daily because the new nokia5g tower is....well....of horrible design to say the least. My tower stays in a location that is dry and 65°F at ALL times. This happens on my 2 wired lines out of the router so no wifi is a part of this. Never ANY errors on cellular or lan logs just a complete drop in gateway connection then 10 secs later back in business. EXTREMELY irritating when playing online games because of the obvious disconnect and then PC telling me no internet. I worked as a repairman for network operations at Birch Telecom for yearsssss but that was before 4th gen wireless rolled out. All of my signals and noise ratios are actually nice. For some reason it acts like authentication is lost for a moment and then re-auths the network. All in all from logs and watching signals, everything looks great but it's not...lol.
I don't know the answer to that. I spoke to probably 3-4 different technicians before we straightened it out. I was told at one point the new 5G gateway was essentially a dual antenna and could receive either a 4G LTE signal or 5G signal. I was also told the gateway looked for, an attached to wherever it received the best signal. So you would assume if there wasn't a good 5G signal it would grab a 4G signal. In our case it didn't work at all. It was my suggestion since we hadn't returned the 4G LTE receiver to reactivate it and give it a try. The tech agreed and after we hooked it back up it worked fine so I stayed with the 4G LTE receiver and sent the 5G back. There seems to be 2 possibilities: 1) The new 5G gateways are not capable of receiving the 4G signal and 2) T-Mobile is putting the 5G gateways out in the market where towers are not yet broadcasting that signal. That's the only explanation I can come up with for our experience.
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.
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….
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.
