Home Internet - 4G LTE vs 5G

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

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

@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?

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.

Phone traffic gets priority over home internet service.

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.

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

@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 Interesting.  So the primary signal is always 4G and used for call control and the secondary signal is always 5G and used for data transfer.  If my 4G is stronger than my 5G, is it transferring data over 4G and completely ignoring 5G or is it still using 5G for data transfer but the weaker signal is giving me slower speeds?

@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.