Home Internet - 4G LTE vs 5G

N71 is 5G

I have 75 mps down on the gateway which lately only has B41 primary and no secondary., Turning the wifi off on my phone it connects to 5G and the download speed is into 200 mps range. So, I don't know why the speed is different between the phone on 5G  and the gateway as iboth are only connecting to B41.

Phone traffic gets priority over home internet service.

jlillard wrote:

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

N71 is the 600 MHz 5G band, also known as Low Band.  Its peak speed can be up to 225 Mbps, but more likely to be in the 100-150 Mbps range.  It provides the furthest signal coverage.

N41 is the 2.5 GHz 5G band, also known as Mid Band that T-Mobile acquired in the Sprint merger.  My T-Mobile gateway is connected to the N41 band and I get up to 600 Mbps download.   The tower is about 1 mile from my home.

My gateway originally connected to the N71 band, but the tower must have been upgraded as it now connects to the faster n41 band.   I didn't even notice the band change until recently, but did notice the faster speed.   

So my earlier posts about band 71 were incorrect as my gateway connects to n41.   Can't update those older posts.

@cjake Thanks for the technical details.  My secondary signal seems to be stable but it's usually only 3 bars.  Is there a way to tell if I'm maxing out my 5-bar primary connection or struggling with distance on my 3-bar secondary connection?

I’ve had no secondary signal for a couple weeks now so I’m totally confused.

After several weeks with no secondary signal I now have primary B2 and secondary N41. Both at 4 bars and download is now around 270 mps. So we'll see how long this lasts.

I'm getting the faster speed through the gateway now since I got the secondary signal back, Whatever they tweaked 2 days ago is working now. Hope it lasts.

Back to B41 primary and no secondary and speed back down to 70mps...WTF

I added a couple dedicated cooling fans (one on top and one on bottom) to see if it helps the stability of my connection.  After doing this and moving the modem back up on to a table from the floor, my primary signal is on B66 at 6/6 bars.  My secondary signal is disconnected.  I just did a speed test and got 77 Mbps down and 46 Mbps up.  These speeds are consistent with what I've gotten in the past which makes me think my secondary signal has never been used because it's been too weak.  According to cellmapper the tower I am closest to is only 4G.  And if I go back to the T-Mobile page to check if I'm eligible for the service, it says I'm not.  I wonder if I got it by mistake.  Hopefully my tower will be upgraded at some point in the future and I'll have a nice 5G connection.

It is not about 2 bar vs 3 bar. I am on intersection of N41 and N71. N41 only get 2 bar but speed is 200mbps and N71 get 3 bar but get 17mbps - 25 mbps. Because N71 is more strong , it is staying on N71 most of time and sometime it switch to N41. Trying to find out how to keep on N41. Looked N41 location and direction on cellmapper.net and placed router at the best place but still goes back and forth between N71 and N41. I know primary always stays on B22 (4G) but secondary switch makes diff so I assume it actually used secondary signal.