Home Internet - 4G LTE vs 5G

Note: The primary signal will be for your 4G control connection. The secondary signal id for your data and will be 5G if it is available. If your secondary signal Band is "n41", then you are on 5G.

@jlillard The secondary signal can also end up being 4G depending on the tower and the signal strength. If you end up with a 4G secondary signal, your top speed will be much lower. Your secondary band indicates the frequency used by your connection and that in turn determines your maximum speed. Your actual speed will also be affected by the signal strength, the other users connected to the same tower, and the tower's backhaul speed (how fast it can send and receive data on the rest of the network).

da.down wrote:

Note: The primary signal will be for your 4G control connection. The secondary signal id for your data and will be 5G if it is available. If your secondary signal Band is "n41", then you are on 5G.

T-Mobile uses several 5G bands.   In my area the n71 600 Mhz band is used.  The n41 band obtained in the Sprint merger is being deployed in areas where T-Mobile does not have 600 Mhz coverage

• Frecuencias que pueden proporcionar 5G: 
  • Band n71 (600 MHz)
  • Band n41 (2.5 GHz)
  • Band n260 (39 GHz)
  • Band n261 (28 GHz)
• Con 5G, se pueden transferir cantidades de datos elevadas con mayor eficiencia que con 4G LTE. 
• Una de las maneras en que T-Mobile está implementando 5G rápidamente es a través de la integración del espectro de banda media de 2.5 GHz de Sprint.

Red de T-Mobile | Asistencia de T-Mobile

My signals are the reverse.  My Primary Signal is 4 bars / B2 and my Secondary Signal is 5 bars / n71.  Guess it helps to be less than a mile from a tower.   I regularly get 400-600 Mbps download speed.

If your PC, laptop, or other device does not support Wi-Fi 6 802.11ax you likely will be limited to speeds in the 100-200 range with Wi-Fi 5 802.11ac or even less with older devices, even if the T-Mobile gateway is connected to 5G.

I have both a Wi-Fi 6 laptop and a Wi-Fi 5 laptop.   I never get more than 200 Mbps download with the Wi-Fi 5 laptop, but 400-600 download is the norm with the Wi-Fi 6 laptop.

@jlillard  Yes, a good secondary signal will get better speeds. If a slow secondary band has a strong signal, it can dominate the cell setup and keep you from connecting on a higher frequency band with better throughput. This is why 5 GHz wifi provides faster speeds than 2.4 GHz as long as the 5 GHz signal is strong enough to avoid packet loss.

It’s your secondary signal connection that determines how fast your download speeds will be.

jlillard wrote:

My Primary Signal is 4 bars / B66 and my Secondary Signal is 3 bars / n71.  My download speeds are less than 100 Mbps.  Does that mean I'm operating over 4G LTE instead of 5G?

I have a similar situation. My secondary is often not connected. I get speeds in the single digits when that happens. Really sucks.

jlillard wrote:

And if the secondary signal is using band n71 then it's a 5G signal, right?

anything with n in front is 5G if it has b in front it’s LTE

ver www.cellmapper.net

Ditto.  My device always has primary of B2, secondary of N41 and I barely get 30Mbs with lots of drop outs (waiting for Youtube to buffer).  At times, speedtest shows less than 1Mbs while the same test in the same room as the gateway gets over 300Mbs on 5g phone.  I've gotten used to just doing a screen cast from my 5G phone since the latest Chromecast (ten feet away) can't connect to the gateway/internet at reliable speeds.  In other words, my 5g phone gets great 5g speeds but the Internet gateway - not so much.

My situation is that band 41 signal is not as strong as band 71. Data rate I get on 41 is useless so device reverts to the B66 4g signal. When I can stay on 71 I get 3 bars and between 100 and 150 Mbs. At all other times everything is at 2 bars with data rates ranging from 5 to  25 Mbs.

I wish there was some way to lock on to the band 71 signal.

I'd like to know the answer to this, too. My primary is B41 and secondary, which I only have occasionally, is N71. Download speeds are usually around 75-80 mps. Sometimes the download speeds reach into the 200mps range but only for short periods.