finding best location for T-Mobile home Internet gateway

When the router/gateway is  powered only by the battery it will not energize the WLAN radios. Keep in mind you need to establish uplinks to the tower before you need the WIFI for the local delivery. Just switch it on, it will initialize in a couple of minutes, tap the LED display on the top and swipe to have it show the bars if they are not presented. Once you can see the bars for signal power just take the can for a walk from window to window and see where you get the most bars. If the windows have screens that are metal they will knock down the signal like a Faraday cage.  Once you find the best window or glass door then you can slowly rotate the router a little at a time and see if the signal strength goes up a bar or two with a given exposure. The antennas in the router are radially around the can in a vertical pattern. There are (4) labeled 5G and (4) labeled WIFI. They alternate 5G, WIFI, 5G, WIFI… I found I could expose the portion of the router just to the left of the back panel toward the tower and it improves the 5G connection. Once you have the signal location established just follow the directions T-Mobile has for setting it up. You can use the default wireless settings to get connected but establishing your own wireless SSID and your own personal password for the admin user are best practice. Secure the wireless with at least WPA2. Some printers only support WPA security so WPA2/WPA is necessary in some cases. Older wireless printers might only have WPA. Depending upon the software code on the router the LAN ports may or may not work. I know they do work with version 1.2003.03.0178 and I would guess many newer T-Mobile/Nokia 5G home internet routers are shipping with this now. You can use the HTML communication 192.168.12.1 to see the reporting and configure the WIFI with a computer. It is a rather simple interface and is missing features that are needed really but it does get the basics done and provides some visibility to how the connections are working. If you get confused and are not familiar with setting up a router like this just call T-Mobile support and ask for a call back if there are no agents available. I have found they usually call back in 15-30 minutes and can make the setup complete in no time. They have visibility to the tower information to know how it is connected so it is helpful.