5G Home Internet T-Mobile Gateway needs to be fixed. There are too many internet disconnections.

Really pathetic that this problem has gone on so long without a fix or even an estimate from T-Mobile when it will be fixed.

They have over expanded their network to much for the towers to be able to handle it all. And they just keep screwing more and more people out of their hard earned money. Turn out to be a BS company 

Timsw wrote:

Blackmateria87 wrote:

My home internet drops randomly every few days, but the speed is so slow when it is connected I cannot get above 15 downloading and I live in a sprawling metropolis that they claim to have reign over. So my question is, what's the deal? My cell phone has outstanding service and hotspot but the stupid can can't handle more than one device connected to it at a time, which basically makes streaming video almost impossible. It buffers every minute or so. It's ridiculous. 

 

Cities sometimes have their towers limited in a direction they are broadcasting, like 40 degrees instead of 360 degrees, as they might be in a rural area. They limit their transmission angles because of signal conflicts with other providers. If your house happens to be in some kind of dead zone, it's just unlucky.

Get back to us if your speed improves and good luck with it.

Yes so true we think of towers as 360 and just not the case. Just because you have a tower half a mile away and in direct line of sight does not mean that any of its antennas are pointed in your direction.

Joliver89 wrote:

We're switching back to SPECTRUM. I don't want to support their services but at least they're better by far in the reliability of their service. 

I thought of something which might be helpful to you or other users of Spectrum. From reading posts on this board, Spectrum offers returning customers a $50/month price for one year for going back to them. I've read of at least two people getting this. You have to have called up and cancelled your service with them to get this deal.

And another guy, who was paying $130/month for 150Mbps service from Spectrum, when he called them up to cancel their service, they offered him a special price of $20/month for one year, if he kept their service. He was new to Tmobile at the time, and not sure if it was going to be good enough for him,  so he took them up on the deal.

Incidentally, this is a standard practice with all internet providers, that when you call to cancel their service after having been a customer for years, they will offer you a discount to “keep them as a backup,” or stay with them instead of leaving.

So my advice to you is when you call up, do not say, "Tmobile was a disaster and I'm crawling back to you so you can charge us outrageous re-connection fees" or whatever, but instead just say you're considering switching to Tmobile, although you will consider staying with Spectrum if offered a good incentive to do so. They will give you a deal. None of these companies want to lose customers.

Swisherswetha wrote:

SAME SAME SAME i kept pushing to keep the first non-refurbished Gateway too, begrudgingly returned it last week along with the second one in hopes that the Texas based tech who was being super helpful was going to solve this issue once and for all with the engineering ticket. No dice. I'm currently suffering and reading this makes me wish I didn't return my original can. Also writing this on my iPad which is on IPhones MAXUP hotspot added in by one of the many techs I spoke with over the past month - issue began around august. 29 week after delivery of initial can and calling in to ask about the FW update. 

 

Also to note OP's speeds were 500+ On first can, mine only ever reached 150+. I've done the whole she-bang; walked around house, 2nd floor, now its in the guest house in the back facing the tower - has its own personal fan and outlet. I live in ultra 5G area - had the 4G LTE router without much issues - I'm going to ask to switch back to it as ive been working from 10 pm to 3 am every day since the new gateway arrived and i get speeds of 130+  during this time. But as soon as morning hits, I'm watching YouTube at 8:30 and can visually see the quality go from 4K to Unable to Stream. Speeds go down to 0.3 and I'm on MAXUP 100 GB hotspot right now. Which is great but not for my zoom meetings hence it is not a permanent solution. Ive currently set it to auto bandwidth on all SSIDs and channel 6 for 2.4 in order to have at least a connection even if its 1 mbps or less. What gives? Congestion in the area was noted by engineers on my ticket - but this congestion appeared after I upgraded to the can? My area is a private residential neighborhood with mainly only Spectrum. T-Mobile is fantastic out here - has been till this can. Really this can seems to be the issue. Either that or they have to update their towers to connect to these cans unless they are throttling us somewhere else for upgrading our 4G LTE routers to the 5G cans

“I live in ultra 5G area - had the 4G LTE router without much issues - I’m going to ask to switch back to it as ive been working from 10 pm to 3 am every day since the new gateway arrived and i get speeds of 130+  during this time.”

This is my point exactly here is a person that had a 4G gateway and had no real issues with the service. Then they get the 5G can and well things go to crap.

I am telling you these 5G cans depend more on the 4G they they should. Think of it the 4G is the Primary signal. Yea I know it should be going with the 5G and not even using the 4G but seems like that is not really the case. As we know the FW is hokie pokie at best so what makes you think the 4G 5G logic is working as it should?

I can easy move my gateway to a place with good 5G and not so good 4G. I will have disconnections, slow downs, zoom will freeze, Netflix will buffer I will hate my service. But man when it works speeds are blazing fast while it last.

Move the can to the spot it is in now and 5G is so bad that the can drops it but 4G is ok you know solid. Now the speeds not so fast but no drops 2 zoom calls going no issue for me and the wife mom is streaming 4k all day and days and days, weeks, click by without a single interruption.

Should it be this way no it should not but it's how I got my can to give me solid service. Again I should not have had to do so much investigation to get a service I am paying for working. Sure I really should be getting the speed after all my area is 5G as shown on the map. But I have opted for solid dependable service over speed. Maybe someday they will get the FW working better maybe it's the towers who knows. But with the amount of ppl having the issues I am banking on FW issue that the 4G/5G logic is flawed.

Interesting I am still doing testing and my own mapping since cellmapper is way off at the least in my area it is useless.

Been thinking about an external ant but decided to call tech to ask about towers in my area. 9:30 am they answered in one min got a nice rep. We went over all the 4GLTE and 5G towers. As I have noted in my area the 4G and 5G towers are not in the same locations. So that's the big rub for me where to put the can to get both not easy. So now I have confirmed what I have manually documented with my own mapping of towers (so way diff then cellmapper they are way way off).

Interesting I have noted many times about how once in a while I get 500+ down and it does not last. This rep was telling me that this tower to my south is being upgraded to 5G and it is still in test not scheduled to go online for another few weeks. So this seems to explain my sporadic 500 down speeds.

Now he warned me few weeks is what is expected but who knows could be longer. This tower is a good shot away almost 3 miles to the south. But there is kinda a valley between me and the tower so could be ok. The actual closest 5G tower is not in a great spot NW 2 miles flat land with lots of trees and warehouses in the way.

Now with the 4G tower .5 to the W and the 5G 2 miles to the NW that's doable from the window I am in but I can never hold the 5G tower for long. This is where the ext ant could help.

But maybe I wait a bit and see if the farter 5G upgraded tower is better. Yes farther but less obstructed IMO. Also speed testing of the 5G tower to my NW is not great speeds are only 250ish near the tower so not sure its a great.

Main issue is if I put the can on the S window to grab the newer soon online 5G tower I have no shot at the 4G tower to the west. This is again where the ext ant could help I could place it outside on the corner of the house there it would see the 4G tower ok and also the 5G.

Again I have so many man hours invested in this whole process. But seems things are on the way to improving with upgrades.

But on the topic of disconnections going on 13 days no drops on the 4GLTE tower. I only unplugged it a few weeks ago to put it on a UPS otherwise we would be at almost 4 weeks with no drops. So if you can get it in a spot it likes it does stay on the tower.

I'm reading the comments r/t internet disconnections, & all the effort going in to trying to achieve decent internet, & I'm thinking it shouldn't be this complicated!! The customers seem to be the ones doing all the work!!! We are restarting our router multiple times daily, they have sent out a new router, we've been on the phone with tech support so much I think they recognize our voices now & draw straws to see who has to deal with us THIS time… and still it's the worst internet I have ever experienced. It's worse than dial-up. They are about to lose our service. The only reason I've hung on this long is that in our neighborhood, there aren't very many alternatives. We can get satellite, but the lag makes it impossible for my son to do what he needs to with his live stream activity. Someone suggested a Verizon hot spot, which I am going to look into, but other than that, we can't get AT&T, can't get Fidelity, can't get SuddenLink… and on top of that, there's been a DDoS event for the last three days - I can't get customer support or any other isp on the phone as a result of that!! Thanks for letting me vent - it helps to see that I'm not the only one having this problem.

I could live with the disconnect issue try going 4 weeks with no service 

Might not be an option for you but you may want to try turning off the built-in WiFi router in the T-Mobile Gateway. Try using an external WiFi router connected to the T-Mobile Gateway via ethernet cable.

From what I read on these forums, the built-in WiFi router in the T-Mobile Gateway isn't as good / reliable as an external dedicated WiFi router. Not only does it raise the operating temp of the T-Mobile Gateway, but it also has issues with poor WiFi routing performance (i.e. disconnects, weak WiFi signal, etc.).