Horrendous Download vs. Awesome Upload Speeds

It sounds like your stuck on the 4G LTE. Look at the Primary and Secondary Cellular signal information on the "Status" page. What bands are those on? Also look at the cellular metrics on the Overview page and record those. If you have the Nokia GW and it does have a 5G signal that should be on the secondary signal. If you have no secondary signal it is just using the 4G LTE signal. 

The cellular metrics actually look pretty good. The LTE signal is a little weaker but no worse than mine. With similar 4G cell metrics I get 40-60 Mbs.  I'm surprised your downloads are not much higher given the 5G n71 metrics. You should be getting 130-170 Mbs downloads with metrics like that. Are the WI-FI statistics clean without errors or packet drops? If the metrics are that good performance should be much better. I tend to believe there is something wrong at the tower. If the local LAN statistics are clean and transferring files on the WI-FI fast then it seems the problem is upstream. 

If there is suspicion about wireless vs. wired connections from the client you use run speed testing with an Ethernet cable vs. via the wireless network. If all clients are connecting via wireless and the results of speed testing are consistent to a reference server then a comparison with a wired client would be good to know. 

If all tests still reflect poor download speeds I would still be suspicious of the tower operation. 

With respect to your neighbors interest. What I have learned here is that especially on the n71 towers they have only so many available connections before they stop taking customers in a given location. If they delay and do not request a subscription they might be left in the queue. If they go ahead and get the gateway and try it they do have the time to send it back OR if T-Mobile tells them it will be a month or two before they have the tower stable then they can have their home internet account suspended (at no cost) and then jump back on when the tower is right. Here the tower loaded up really fast and I have heard from multiple people in our area that are in the queue. Unless someone drops out OR a new cell becomes available they would have to wait or go for another solution. Just food for thought.

IF I was stuck with a slow expensive solution I would jump in right away. Delay means they will probably not get a spot on the tower. If it does not work out they can cancel at any time or suspend and wait till it does work.

Another thought on that is if your neighbor gets a gateway/subscription and it works well for them then the datapoint may be very helpful. It could suggest that the problem is more with the gateway you have vs a tower issue. You could request another gateway and have them send one out. Just a thought.

Thanks for getting back with me. Here's what I've got:

How would I check the WiFi stats? We're just using the TMO trash can for in-house WiFi and we don't do any internal transfers. We just use email and web searches and watch videos, we'd like to do some streaming but we've never had the download speed to do it reliably.

Thanks for you help.

Log onto your router (from a browser) and check the statistics under WLAN. See if there are a lot of reported discards, errors, etc. 

I would also try to plug directly into it with an Ethernet cable if you have one available. 
 

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Here’s the 2.4

Here’s the 5

Either the gateway does not record the discarded packets or the communication is clean so if there are not signs of damaged packets then that would not account for a performance problem. If there are discards it often is due to damaged packets and leads to retransmissions which of course leads to poor performance especially when there is repeated packet damage. 

I have never been able to get any answers as to the "Sent Errors" and mine reports those all the time on the WIFI radios. I can see no indication they cause any problem. 

Since you have the PCI, physical cell identifier values it would be possible to locate the source for those signals. Cellmapper.net is ~80% maybe more, effective in having the location of the towers. Some of the newer 5G cells are not in the database they maintain but the 4G LTE most likely are. In this case locating the tower and evaluating another location for the gateway would not be that useful. You might be able to improve the signal reception but the cellular metrics are actually pretty good. With the 5G NR signal strength the downloads should be MUCH better than you stated in your post. There has to be something wrong on the tower or that gateway has some problem. I would lean toward the tower but it could be on either end. With such good signal quality and the low signal noise it is strange that downloads are not in the 130-180 Mbs at least. 

Señal principal

PCI  480 Band  B66

Señal secundaria

PCI  873 Band  n71

If you are using Speedtest.net to run speed tests be sure to get the details/all the statistics and instead of testing with which ever server is listed as the "optimal" server run several tests with select servers. I am in East TN but I use the T-Mobile Charlotte, NC server most to test against. I use it as a reference as it seems to be very consistent for results. The results are dependent upon a number of variables but using one or two locations for reference points seems to provide a better benchmark. The server in Charlotte seems to be fronted by better connectivity and resources than some. A small town ISP is probably not likely to provide results that are as good as a larger solution. It depends on traffic, router hops, distance, capability of the equipment etc...

You can use fast.com as weil which is helpful for comparison. There are a number of different speed testing solutions out there. 

I would still suggest to get more information from T-Mobile on the connection you have with them and let them know how poor the download performance is. Push for answers. They may be upgrading equipment so that might be part of the problem. It takes time for them to get it nailed down it seems.

I’ll check with a network cable later today but I’m leaning toward the tower as being the problem and I always did.

It's a good idea as it should effectively eliminate the WIFI from the equation. It may also help with support calls as one of the troubleshooting steps you have taken. 
 

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