Forum Discussion
5G Home Internet vs. phone data speeds
So I'm a Magenta Max customer and mostly happy with my service. We live in a town where the 5G can be very strong depending on time of day/which part of town you're in.
So I started considering switching my home internet to T-Mobile's 5G Home Internet, and did some research. I turned off my phone's wifi to run speed tests on my phone's 5G data from inside my home. It varies a TON depending on the room and the time of day. I've seen download speeds as high as 300+ and upload speeds of about 6-8 (at the times you'd expect… late night or early morning) but as low as 6Mbps for downloads and 1 for uploads (during peak times). That lower number concerned me as I work from home during the day, participating in a lot of mandatory video calls. I can't have my internet just disappear during peak work hours. A great price for home internet won't matter if I lose my job because I can't stay online on a Thursday afternoon.
So I went to a T-Mobile outlet to ask an employee about it. The kid told me the phone data speeds are worse than what I'd get with Home Internet because the wifi customers are "on a different tower." I'm no expert on this stuff, but this sounded made-up to me, like he just wanted me to feel better so I'd buy something. But maybe someone who knows more can confirm if the T-Mobile employee was correct: Are Home Internet speeds better than what I get from my T-Mobile 5G device in the same building, and if so, is it because they deliberately use different towers for that service, as this guy told me?
I should add that this kid was very obviously trying to get me to sign up on the spot, showing me 1000+ speed tests on his device (irrelevant to me because I don't live at the T-Mobile store so my speed won't be the same). So I protected myself by leaving without signing up for the trial service, although I am still considering it.
So anyone with better knowledge than me - and with no stake in trying to sell me something on commission - what's the real story here? Can I reasonably expect better speeds (and most importantly, no frequent drops in service while I'm working) then I get on a 5G mobile device from within the same residence? Thanks for any help!
So I thought I would jump in and add my speeds...first, I changed from ATT wired Internet back in December. Due to where I live, I had no other option. ATT was incredibly slow peaking at an average of only 10-14 down and maybe 7-9 up! Plus, we could only have a couple of things connected at a time! It was horrible! So with this 5g , average is 70-135 down and 30-40 up and as many devices as we need to use at any given time! I'm home all the time so I run tests randomly and the speed has been as slow as maybe 50 down but then only for a few minutes or so. Since we have had it for 3 months or so now, we have only had an issue twice that I can think of! I've been pleasantly surprised with this service and with the price! ATT kept increasing until it was almost 70 a month with those extremely slow speeds!
Denny, calling 611 will not be anymore helpful than the store. For a year after the tower, gateway came out no one could explain how it would get better reception than my phone. On accident I came across a video and it explained all. It's kinda backwards. I just got off the phone and got nowhere but I think I have found the place to get my answers. Or videos. T mobile had a load of videos.
Update to previous post. A knowledgeable T-Mobile source stated T-Mobile does pawn off their home internet customers to 3rd party isp companies at low speeds during times of expected congestion (evenings/late night) and when towers are congested so high speed goes to cell phone customers.
As these speeds go down when they say it is high congestion, is T-Mobile just pawning home internet customers to different isp servers for their phone customers to use their towers only? I wondered because I tested 2 phones with Ookla for internet speed over 100 times within an hour (10-11PM). On every test with both phones when WiFi was turned off and it was on 5G, all tests download speeds were between 180 to 251 and t-mobile phones connected to t-mobile Pittsburgh server (same server all tests show the Home Internet gateway connects to early morning around 350 until it slows down around 4pm around 100). But when tested on the phones with t-mobile home internet, same amount of tests for the "recommended best signal switching between 5G & 2.4G", -tests on 5G and tests on 2.4G during this same time as the cellular 180-251 5G tests, all scores ranged from 29 to 50 with almost all between 29-33. But the thing that I have a question about is because all tests were connected to different isp servers (Armstrong Cable in Zelienople, PA, Magna5 in Boyers PA or wVNET in Morgantown WV). From between 25 & 30 tests for each network, 100% of the T-mobile Home Internet WiFi tests connected to a non-t-mobile isp server far away from where I am located and 100% of the 5G cellular network tests connected to the t-mobile Pittsburgh network close to my home (that my TMHI is normally connected to except for evenings). Are they throttling TMHI customers or just pawning us off to other companies at certain times of the day?
The difference between the two is somewhat explainable. On the T-Mobile 5G cellular network phones on the same cells/frequencies as the gateway devices will have priority due to being phones. Often people overlook the cellular antennas and chips in the devices. They are not equivalent so the difference in the two cellular hardware components has to be considered. If you are running testing from the gateway is is probably tested over IPv4 whereas your phone could well be IPv6 not IPv4 so the routing for the two can different. There would also be a bit more overhead with the gateway over IPv4 due to the 464XLAT and the translation from IPv4 to IPv6 and back to IPv4. Plus you also have to run a speed test against the same server in many cases. The "optimal" server the test each uses also can be different and render results that are not even close.
This seems like a similar topic to what I am looking at. My 5G home internet is typically about 60-90 MBS down. But I am curious why my phone on 5G in the same location (iPhone 12) is getting about 3X the speed down? If my phone and the home internet gateway are in the same location, why would the gateway be that much slower?
The safe size of packets for an IPsec VPN is 1328 bytes.
TechTarget.com (search for Managing VPN bandwidth)There is also a MTU article in the Dig Deeper on WAN tech.
This assumes you want to geek out. 😎That is exactly why I strongly recommend anyone who is interested to do the trial run and not dive in after termination of the current service. It could be T-MOBILE is still working on the towers in the area. They tend to start loading before they are done I think. Some instances it seems as if users come on and speeds are great only to go south after a month or two.
With a VPN keep in mind your packets will be encapsulated in the tunnel. You might need to lower the MTU from 1500 bytes to I think 1440-1460 bytes. Large max size packets are where the problem can be encountered.
You might check downdetector.com to see if there are reports of outages for T-MOBILE in your area.Welp. At about 4:30pm on Friday the download speed plummeted to 11. By 5pm it was 6Mbps. On top of that, my cellular service dropped from 3 bars to 1 (even briefly went into SOS mode).
I expected a drop at peak hours. But I'm not sure total paralysis of the service during work hours is something I can deal with long-term. Those are peak hours for a reason. People need internet / cell service most at that time of day.
