5G Home Internet nightly slow down

Schwibs wrote:

I am having the same issues.  Service was great for about 8 months and now is terribly slow and almost unusable in the evening.  My guess is that the network is congested and needs to be upgraded.  I've done a ton of repositioning and closely watching the metrics to get the best signal possible.  
 

I not only have slow speeds, but extremely high latency which is terrible for trying to play games online.  I can't recommend the service any longer.

Et al, Agree with Schwibs I CANNOT recommend this service any longer. I have been a Tmobile HI customer for 3 years. I would preach TMobile HI is the best no need for Spectrum, etc. Fast forward, Tmobile service has degraded to the point that their price lock pricing is not worth it. IF I have to work nights on the internet I will not keep their service due to speed drastically dropping, increased latency and the uplink being no good at 3-5MBs (will not support video teleconferencing). I will give this 4th gateway (within 1.5 years) sent from Tmobile a try, IF no luck will go back to Spectrum/Brightspeed. It was good while it lasted-NEED the US Govt to step in and resolve these large telecommunications companies from robbing us blind.

TLDR—but a good read.

FYSA up front, my background IT professional 20+yrs, newbie to these forums. Take no offense-do not ask me basic 101 questions. I do this for living here and in austere locations.

Seems like after COVID customer service across the board has gone down hill in the USA. Pre COVID laws protected the customer, post COVID the laws protect the companies and not the customer. You see arbitration clause as the norm if we use any service and as companies continue to sub contract, creating roadblocks for us to resolve anything but taking our money. They do not offer money back for the down times/days we have no service (i recall getting prorated credits for days without internet from TWC-I cannot even get that from Tmobile for the nightly decreased speeds/latency that do not support my networks. So hmm I know Im not the only one experiencing this. Tmobile gets 100% of their monthly payment for degrade service-nightly. How is this America? Crazy 180 turn around on services in our country. I have friends stationed overseas paying way less for guaranteed internet speeds, no issues.

I have home internet at two different locations in USA. Never had issues when they rolled out 5GHI in NYC (2022), speeds on Arcadyan KVD21 5bars Excellent-downlink 700+ Mbs/30+Mbs consistently. Second location North Carolina (2022) Sagemcom FAST5688W intermittent between 4bars Very good/3bars Good (Good is majority of the time) 400Mbs/30Mbs. In NC after couple months the gateway started to toggle between N41 (faster) and N71(slower) bands. Troubleshot with TMobile tech dept.-no fix action/no resolution. They sent me a replacement GW (gateway) Arcadyan KVD21 sig strength 3bars Good, speed 325Mbs/30Mbs. Worked great for couple months then same story speed decreased, latency went up. Canceled TMobile, went back to Spectrum for couple months. 

Came back to Tmobile during a promo and cell towers being moded by me. Again Fall 2023 sign up with TMobile HI receive a Arcadyan KVD21, sig 3bars Good, speed 300Mbs/15Mbs drop from last year. Worked great, preached the TMobile script again. This year had more latency issues ping 400-500ms-YES troubleshot with TMobile, yes have the optimum location in house for cell tower reception. GW is 10ft high and LOS (line of sight) nothing but empty fields and then tower. TMobile sends another Arcadyan KVD21. No issues for motnhs speeds good latency good. Now in 2024 i notice in my area when spectrum changes prices and speed availability drops TMobile speed drops as well. Also June 2024 Federal money ran out for the American Connectivity Program ACP ran out, which also means the Federal supplement money the Government gave to these mega telecommunications companies also dried up (did you know that?) Then internet prices go up/speeds go down and the telecommunications company make it seem like nothings changed. For SA the speeds under the ACP program was 30Mbs-100MBs for free to those that qualified, is now a paid plan. During this time is when I noticed my service degrade latency up speeds down, nightly (Yes I have read the TMobile prioritization policy. But where I am at there is no cell traffic at night because the Interstate is closed M-F for construction for months now. Called TMobile to cancel they said we will send you another GW, received today lets see how long this one works.

IF this craps out I'll have to go back to Spectrum hardwire/fiber. Till Metronet starts laying down their fiber backbone.

Thanks so much for the reply.  There is no freeway nearby and the city has maybe 16,000 people in it.  Download speeds range from 300 to under 5 and upload from about 20 to 4.  The patterns of slowdown don't correspond to rush hour but instead seem to relate to peak TV times.  They were especially bad during the evening when the Olympics were on and caused the TV stream to buffer and sputter repeatedly.  I have used the location functoin in the app to find a better spot, although there is no ideal place on the 3rd floor of this townhouse because the only windows are on the opposite side of the nearest tower.  All that said, this has worked exceptionally for 10 of the 11 months I have used it, rarely going below 100 mbps which is adequate for us.  Then the bottom started dropping out at night.  As for the metrics, they are as follows:  Received signal strngth indicator, LTE: Good, Reference signal received quality: 5G and LTE, good.  Reference signal received power:  5G and LTE both poor.  Signal interference to noise ratio: 5G: Excellent, LTE: Poor.  Band:  5G: n41, LTE: b66, Cell Global Identity:  LTE:  31026068876035.   Channel Quality Indication:  LTE:  4

None of this makes any sense to me.  Hope it does to you.  Thanks again.  

copz1998 wrote:

@ECMP it is helpful to have your gateway metrics and an understanding of your location. Are you located near a freeway? If so, the morning and evening commute traffic will impact your signal (download/upload speeds) as T-mobile prioritizes cellular traffic over home internet traffic. For example, I am near a freeway and my speeds drop to about 90-110 Mbps down during commute hours and rise to 150-250 Mbps at night with less traffic. 

Using your T-Mobile Internet app, tap the "MORE" link at the bottom of the screen, then Advanced cellular metrics, then 5G. What are your RSRP, RSRQ, and SINR metrics? Which band are you connected to (n41 or n71)? 

See the chart below for interpreting the metrics.

 

I'm not getting anywhere near the type of services that I got when I first signed up well over a year ago. I currently average around 6 mbps.  Yes you read that right … 6.  I used to get around 100. I have moved the gateway to every spot in my house. Not sure where to go from here. I don't want to give up the service and switch but I work from home and this just isn't working. 

Exact same issue here.  I have respectable speeds during the day and most week nights.  But during peak hours on weekends, my speeds plummt from 200-300 MBPS to anywhere between 5 and 12.  I have tried rebooting the router without success.  During the Olympics they were even worse.  Any suggestion that router placement is the issue cannot account for the fact that the speed is great except duirng times of peak demand.  It is hard to escape the conclusion that the system simply cannot handle the traffic.  The TVs start to buffer rendering the service next to useless.  I am hard-pressed to think that there is any alternative other than pony up the extra money for a hard-wired service.  I like TMobile and go all the way back to the VoiceStream days.  But this is my second rodeo with the wireless service, the first being a disaster, and my patience is wearing thin.  Has this service just been oversold?    

I am yet another user having the SAME EXACT ISSUE. For me it's the 3-6am range which sucks because i wake up really early and use my PC. I'm wired into my hotspot and there's no reason for anything on my end to slow down. It's all T-Mobile. Cell users get priority ?? That's fine. How many people are actually on their phone as i write this at 3:30am?? I just got a new piece of hardware. There is absolutely no reason for almost no bandwidth coming through 

T-Mobile has oversubscribed their home internet, plain and simple. You get good speeds during the day when most people are working, once they're home and streaming video and the like the network is congested and speeds fall off dramatically. It's a great service if you work evenings and use it during the day only! LOL

I hope you all get some sort of resolution. ¡Feliz búsqueda!

Sorry friends, I forgot to update when this got resolved. Here's hoping you can dedicate the time it took me to get this resolved (if what I did even affected the results).

What I did that was extremely time consuming was I constantly called and chatted customer service the second it throttled or slowed to the crawl. I called and called and argued and argued. After about three days and seriously considering cutting back to my old plan I was told to send my unit back. I drove to two T-Mobile stores and forgive me but it's been almost a year since then and I can't recall if they shipped it for me in the store but I recall a distinct displeasure of dealing with the store personnel. Either way, the old unit went back to HQ and I got a new one in the mail 2-3 days later.

I made a call to the local store to ask about coverage and they said they don't offer home internet at my address when I in fact had a gateway running previously AND a new one on the way from main customer support. I'm not sure if they had beefed up the tower and were previously shifting to the Narrowband 5G cell beam in the evenings while they did work previously. But by the time the new gateway came in my speeds were solid and I haven't noticed any issues.

If anyone wants to doubt my credentials and ability to troubleshoot, I've worked in IT and communications for 12 years, all 12 of those doing majority wireless transmission work and 8 years networking experience. I'm very well versed in transmission of information, so no it wasn't an IP setting on my laptop, it wasn't the WiFi frequency of 2.4GHz or 5GHz. It wasn't band overlap with my neighbors WiFi. It was not a throttling on my PC to conserve resources. It had to be something on T-Mobile's end, but it's resolved for me now.

MAUI671 wrote:

@copz1998 I hear your suggestion, but follow the train of thought here. The signal is 500 Mbps in its location during daytime hours. Nothing changes but the time of day. Once 8 PM Eastern hits, the signal is EXACTLY the same still, but download drops from 500 Mbps to 5 Mbps. Again, no changes but the time of day.

I've done the repositioning multiple times now at the behest of customer care and still to no avail. Spent more than an hour on it at this point trying to be proactive. I've used the app, watched the SNR, RSSI, etc. and no changes to the speed no matter how high good I get those values. Any other suggestions for me to be proactive with?

@MAUI671 He posted the same exact thing in my thread.  Your post is very clear stating that your internet is stable during the day, it has a "Very Good" signal, and is gets worse at night and you haven't changed anything.  I see a consistent pattern of people stating that their speeds significantly decrease late at night.  Hopefully someone will escalate this to the technical team who can state why this is happening.  My guess is it may be due to nightly IT maintenance but it's purely speculation.

“During the day my gateway pulls about 500 Mbps and has a “Very Good” signal. Without moving or changing anything about the setup, usage area, or anything, around 8PM Eastern my speeds go down to MAX 5 Mbps.

Nothing has changed other than the time of the day.”

MAUI671 wrote:

 

During the day my gateway pulls about 500 Mbps and has a "Very Good" signal. Without moving or changing anything about the setup, usage area, or anything, around 8PM Eastern my speeds go down to MAX 5 Mbps.

Nothing has changed other than the time of the day.

I relayed this to Customer Care, and while they seem sympathetic to the plight, they ultimately just want me to continuously restart the gateway so they can reconnect it to the tower because it has “stopped communicating.” Is this the common reply that everyone is getting?

@MAUI671 I have the exact same issue except my speeds drop after 2am central time.  My modem also reboots.  I also agree with the fact that support only offers reboot as a solution.  It's extremely frustrating for me.