Forum Discussion
Brand new to home Internet and hoping to improve speed
I read a bunch of the horror stories in here, but decided to try T-Mobile's home internet anyhow 'cause I ALSO read some of the "I get 200+ Mb/s and it NEVER drops below 100" topics. I'm in a town o...
If you get the PCI value you can search for it on CellMapper.net and locate the tower that serves that signal out. With a 4G LTE / 5G NR capable phone it should be possible to obtain the cellular metrics for both signals. The bars on the LED screen are rather generic and do not provide enough information. It does not sound like you are receiving a 5G signal with those speeds or it is a very poor signal reception.
You state you are using CellMapper on your phone so are you looking at 4G or 5G signaling or both?
With CellMapper.net in a browser you can provide your area code to get the general location and then display 4G LTE, 5G NR, or both. I find filtering for one or the other helpful. You will see more 4G LTE towers and IF the 5G cell you receive is on the map that really helps but CellMapper is not 100% as it does rely upon users using the Android application and uploading the findings to the server to have the data installed into the database. This does require an account but it does not cost anything to set up. CellMapper seems to be one of the best resources for locating the cells still. Below is a chart that will help you determine more about your cellular signals. Use the T-Mobile home internet mobile application on your phone to see the cellular metrics. Determine if you really are receiving a functional 5G signal.
I’ve got an 800 number to get me to the “home internet” team, so I’ll try that when I get home in a couple hours.
Last night, from around 7 pm til sometime after 9 pm, the home internet was non-functional. Computers and cell phones couldn't even connect to it. The couple times I DID get the computer to connect download speeds were in the .5 Mb/s (not 5, .5)…
We COULD, in theory, be in some kind of dead zone, but I'm getting different answers from different tools. Cellmapper insists I'm using the tower across the river (East), which is at MOST ¼ mile away. And we're slightly uphill from downtown, so it should be seeing us perfectly. Network Call Info Lite (NCIL) says we're using a tower straight South that's about 5 or 6 blocks - maximum ½ mile. OR, about 7:30 it started saying we're using a tower that's less than 2 blocks - literally down the street. We have clear line of sight to all of them.
This morning, using the speed test in NCIL, from the cell phone I got about 16 Mb/s. Using the wifi into the home Internet I got about 9. And in the last 20 minutes that's dropped to about FIVE Mb/s.
On the other hand, if I switch OFF 5G on the cell phone and do a speed test, I consistently get between 35 and 50 Mb/s, but I have no idea if the Home Internet is smart enough to switch OUT of 5G or if it even can.
At THIS moment (08:15), I had to reconnect to the home internet. Apparently the connection dropped and one of the other data lines took over. BUT, when I reconnected and ran speed test on the computer, I got 60 Mb/s download. If it would do that all the time, I'd be happy. AND from the cell into the home internet I got 48-60 Mb/s. And the cell by itself just showed 250 Mb/s.
Since I’ve been messing with all this for 2 hours, I can absolutely say I was NOT seeing anything like this before just after 8 a.m. I WAS seeing the numbers above - maybe 16 on the phone, about 9 dropping to around 5 on the Home Internet.
What the heck is going on? Just went out and did the same thing with my wife's computer and cell phone. She's getting around 60 Mb/s from the home Internet and 270 from her cell…
And is it going to go back to garbage at 8:30 or 9 a.m. when people start doing whatever?
