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 of 20,000 a ways south of Minneapolis.
I have 2 Galaxy S22 phones and at the moment they're getting about 14-16 Mb/s, which is ALSO what the home internet is getting. BUT, minute to minute, speeds on all the devices fluctuates wildly. It can be 4 Mb/s 1 minute and 15 the next, then back to 2.
I don’t know how accurate or consistent speedtest.net is, so is there a better tool for getting good data on speed?
I did the setup with the phone app. And when I told it to find the tower it pointed North. There aren't any towers I know of that are north, but the app said there was. Since it was next to me, I pointed it North, just in case. Got about 14-16 Mb/s. Turned it East, toward downtown, which is straight through the window in the office and got about 14-16 Mb/s. Turned it south and got about the same. Didn't seem to matter. NO direction EVER produced anything like the number I'm seeing from others in here who aren't happy with 50 or 60 Mb/s.
I put cellmapper on the phone and it pointed directly at the tower downtown - about 300 yards away. So, I put the box in the window pointing down town and got about 12-14 Mb/s.
Moved it to the center of the house so it was between wife and me, and it got about 10-20 Mb/s most of the time. About the same as sitting in the office window on on the desk next to me.
A little while ago I moved it so it’s 10 feet from the wife, pointing out a window directly at the tower and it got about 7 - 10 Mb/s, maxed out around 14 Mb/s.
Both phones and the home Internet all say they’ve got 5G, but unless I’m doing something wrong, this has to be about the slowest 5G around…
Is there anything I should be doing differently? Does pointing the thing toward where I THINK a tower is make any difference? Am I three blocks from the downtown tower and just in some kind of 5G wasteland and out of luck?
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.
Itinkeralot...a question for you. I'm north of Durham and my cell tower is almost exactly as you described (5.5 miles, but I have line-of-sight as well). My download averages 60 mbps, with a low of 15 and a high of 130 observed. Uploads only a little slower than downloads typically. Router shows 4-bars, but some of the cell metrics not so hot. What are you seeing with yours? (sorry for the cell hijack!)
I suggest you contact T-Mobile support and have them provide you with more information about the actual cell coverage in the area. They may be deploying 5G coverage but it sounds like it is not close enough to be very functional. That tower you can see might not be hosting T-Mobile cells. I know the tower that serves the cells we connect to is 5.3 miles due north and we have clear line of sight. I don't mean to be the grinch but you might be in a cellular dead zone or at the edge of a cell reach. The tower you do see downtown might be hosting T-Mobile cells but your location might still be on the edge of the Fresnal zone. The cell emits the waves in a shape somewhat like a blimp or football shape referred to as the Fresnal zone. If there is insufficient downward tilt of the cell the sweet spot of the emissions are possibly well above your gateway. Often they deploy multiple cells in a location and the signals are set to try to cover the area close and farther out. T-Mobile has the information from your SIM card that should provide them with information to determine more about the connection. Maybe they are in the process of turning up the 5G delivery in the area and have not completed their work. Contacting support and pushing for answers is probably your best course of action.
I'm not sure what the home Internet does as far as priority, but it MOSTLY runs about the same speeds as either of the S22s. But, this evening, the Home Internet totally tanked. There was a period where you couldn't even connect to it. At the moment, my S22 is getting about 34 Mb/s. The HI is getting just over 3 Mb/s… So there must be something going on, I just don't know enough to know what it is.
BUT, we hadn’t originally planned to get the Home Internet, so if I can’t get some kind of resolution from the “home internet” support people tomorrow it’ll go back and we’ll stay with the 15-year-old DSL that only gets 20 Mb/s, but reliably does about 15, which is adequate for what we use it for…
Just as a note… I may me taking some assumptions here, but I am under the assumption that T-Mobile home internet is 'deprioritized' out of the box. I have 1 cell tower close to my house - LTE only, and 2 5G, towers 'nearby'. TMobile home internet picks up both LTE and n41 5G, 'but' service is much less usable than my cell. Latency is high, and speeds fluctuate from 10-50Mbps, with often timeouts. Late night it goes over 300Mbps.
On my S21, its typically well over 100Mbps, up to ~220Mbps late at night, but never picks up n41 and rarely n71. Latency is decent and stable.
I'm very new to cellmapper, and can't run it on any of the actual computers because it insists I'm using an ad blocker. Even when I turn off ALL the extensions in Firefox or Chrome it still complains. So, it's not very useful on the computer.
It SHOWS three towers nearby, but nothing about which one would be used here, or anything else.
Thus, I ran it on the cell phone.
BTW: At the moment, the desktop is getting somewhere between .5 Mb/s (yes, 500k) and 2.1 Mb/s. The cell phone has dropped out of 5G and it got 3.9 Mb/s a minute ago.
As far as 4G or 5G or whatever, I don't know what it's showing. In the home internet app, I can see devices connected (or could, before things turned to *&^%$ a little while ago), and the netword STILL says the connection is "Excellent". I have no idea what PCI is, or how to relate any metrics - are you talking about the stuff in the "more" tab? If so, which ones?
At the moment, there's not even enough bandwidth available to SEND this entry. I had to switch back to the old DSL to get enough network.
ERROR 403
The request could not be satisfied.
Request blocked. We can't connect to the server for this app or website at this time. There might be too much traffic or a configuration error. Try again later, or contact the app or website owner.
If you provide content to customers through CloudFront, you can find steps to troubleshoot and help prevent this error by reviewing the CloudFront documentation.Generated by cloudfront (CloudFront)
Request ID: 9Ym2IOUMrdtooem2QzWbBWRFpUGhP1PdL_KUkXwsNletJnd-xXZq5Q==
After which nothing T-Mobile was reachable from any of my networks for a couple hours.
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.
