MIMO antenna for T-Mobile 5G home internet gateway?

I had no luck with the waveform yagi or mimo antennas. The Nokia works best if you use all four ports. The only antenna that worked for me was the Bolton Long ranger antenna.

I am six miles from the tower with really dense forest.

Jaredkern wrote:

ErikS1002 wrote:

I recently rolled the dice on waveforms external antenna. My parents chose T-Mobile for home internet because of the awesome results I have had at my home. They also lacked any other real options. I would strongly consider moving before I ever considered settling for CenturyLink or HughesNet and this is what they faced. Luckily T-Mobile was available so they signed up. Gateway arrives, I set it up, and run the first speed test. 21mbps up and 4mbps down. This was super disappointing considering I consistently see speeds over 250mbps down and 35-40mbps up at my home from T-Mobile. They have a tower 0.83 miles west of their location so I expected much more. The issue they face is that their property is densely wooded including a high volume of large trees that completely surround the home. So, I took a gamble on an external panel 4x4 mimo. Super simple to connect to gateway. I used a gps to determine the exact azimuth to the nearest tower. Ran some test speed test with the antenna on the same side as that tower and pointed in its direction. I also tried it in various other locations on all sides of the house running test from each. Ultimately the location on the same side and pointed at nearest tower showed best results so I mounted it up. Not difficult to do at all. The only issue I could see being a problem would be if the best location ended up being on the front center of the home. While it isn't this massive sore thumb on the house it is noticeable. Luckily our spot ended up being the back corner of the house. With install complete I went back to run a series of speed tests. Using the external antenna saved us from the 21mbps down we started with. Now, my parents consistently get speeds of 350mbps down during the peak use times and sometimes as high as 500mbps down during off hours (1:00 am). Honestly, I was absolutely floored. I never expected gains like that. Now that I have seen the possibilities I don't see why everyone would get one. If you are going to rely on you primary internet service arriving via 4g or 5g why wouldn't you do everything to grab every extra bit of signal strength or speed or reliability you can. For me and my family it is totally worth every penny.

If anyone has any additional questions about it feel free to reach out. I would be happy to help. 

Did you have to dissect the router to install or is this plug and play? If so what's the connector type to plug and play 

Look at the OP. He has a link which goes into how to do it, etc. Simple answer is yes, you have to take the gateway apart to a point to do it. 

ErikS1002 wrote:

I recently rolled the dice on waveforms external antenna. My parents chose T-Mobile for home internet because of the awesome results I have had at my home. They also lacked any other real options. I would strongly consider moving before I ever considered settling for CenturyLink or HughesNet and this is what they faced. Luckily T-Mobile was available so they signed up. Gateway arrives, I set it up, and run the first speed test. 21mbps up and 4mbps down. This was super disappointing considering I consistently see speeds over 250mbps down and 35-40mbps up at my home from T-Mobile. They have a tower 0.83 miles west of their location so I expected much more. The issue they face is that their property is densely wooded including a high volume of large trees that completely surround the home. So, I took a gamble on an external panel 4x4 mimo. Super simple to connect to gateway. I used a gps to determine the exact azimuth to the nearest tower. Ran some test speed test with the antenna on the same side as that tower and pointed in its direction. I also tried it in various other locations on all sides of the house running test from each. Ultimately the location on the same side and pointed at nearest tower showed best results so I mounted it up. Not difficult to do at all. The only issue I could see being a problem would be if the best location ended up being on the front center of the home. While it isn't this massive sore thumb on the house it is noticeable. Luckily our spot ended up being the back corner of the house. With install complete I went back to run a series of speed tests. Using the external antenna saved us from the 21mbps down we started with. Now, my parents consistently get speeds of 350mbps down during the peak use times and sometimes as high as 500mbps down during off hours (1:00 am). Honestly, I was absolutely floored. I never expected gains like that. Now that I have seen the possibilities I don't see why everyone would get one. If you are going to rely on you primary internet service arriving via 4g or 5g why wouldn't you do everything to grab every extra bit of signal strength or speed or reliability you can. For me and my family it is totally worth every penny.

If anyone has any additional questions about it feel free to reach out. I would be happy to help. 

Did you have to dissect the router to install or is this plug and play? If so what's the connector type to plug and play 

Interesting. Wonder if they actually can't do anything if you did mount outside though, because like with satellites, etc. it's illegal to "ban" them. So most HOA's here say no to them, but they can't actually do anything for those who install them. 

I am just debating because I really don't want to go into the attic to pull another cable for the device when now I have like R80+ blown in up there. If it was a year ago, I would have done it in a heat beat lol 

I live in an HOA and outside mounting would be prohibited so I am going to use inside antenna mounted up against a window facing the tower.

The flip side is that I live in 3 story house and the 3rd level is my bedroom so no biggie to have the Waveform antenna face the tower from inside.

Will update once this is completed.

Anyone install one of these panels inside? I get 3 out of 5 bars where I want to place it and 4 of 5 for LTE and get 350-450Mbps regularly, but if I go outside or move to improve, I get 450-500 regularly and sometimes see 750+. Wondering if I kept it where it should be and just mounted and used one of these antennas inside on the wall if it would make a big enough difference, being a higher gain antenna than whats in the unit. 

TwoCutes wrote:

Hola all - 
New T-Mobile home internet user, here.  I set up my 5G internet gateway (silver cylinder) this weekend and it works just fine.  I have Frontier DSL and Charter Spectrum now and T-Mobile is currently way outperforming Frontier DSL and outperforming Charter Spectrum almost always.

I found this article about installing a MIMO antenna using the internal gateway ports. 

https://www.waveform.com/a/b/guides/hotspots/t-mobile-5g-gateway

Has anyone tried it?  I would be interested in experiences and results.  ¡Gracias de antemano!

I have it worth every penny if you are not getting good signal as is.

If you use the search I am sure you will find my countless post on it.

Does the antenna utilize coax from the roof to the interior of the home? I have an old satellite mounted rooftop that I'm thinking of removing and using one of these antennas so that I can use my old network rack in my basement where the old modem used to sit. 

I recently rolled the dice on waveforms external antenna. My parents chose T-Mobile for home internet because of the awesome results I have had at my home. They also lacked any other real options. I would strongly consider moving before I ever considered settling for CenturyLink or HughesNet and this is what they faced. Luckily T-Mobile was available so they signed up. Gateway arrives, I set it up, and run the first speed test. 21mbps up and 4mbps down. This was super disappointing considering I consistently see speeds over 250mbps down and 35-40mbps up at my home from T-Mobile. They have a tower 0.83 miles west of their location so I expected much more. The issue they face is that their property is densely wooded including a high volume of large trees that completely surround the home. So, I took a gamble on an external panel 4x4 mimo. Super simple to connect to gateway. I used a gps to determine the exact azimuth to the nearest tower. Ran some test speed test with the antenna on the same side as that tower and pointed in its direction. I also tried it in various other locations on all sides of the house running test from each. Ultimately the location on the same side and pointed at nearest tower showed best results so I mounted it up. Not difficult to do at all. The only issue I could see being a problem would be if the best location ended up being on the front center of the home. While it isn't this massive sore thumb on the house it is noticeable. Luckily our spot ended up being the back corner of the house. With install complete I went back to run a series of speed tests. Using the external antenna saved us from the 21mbps down we started with. Now, my parents consistently get speeds of 350mbps down during the peak use times and sometimes as high as 500mbps down during off hours (1:00 am). Honestly, I was absolutely floored. I never expected gains like that. Now that I have seen the possibilities I don't see why everyone would get one. If you are going to rely on you primary internet service arriving via 4g or 5g why wouldn't you do everything to grab every extra bit of signal strength or speed or reliability you can. For me and my family it is totally worth every penny.

If anyone has any additional questions about it feel free to reach out. I would be happy to help. 

It's important to note that these antennas are *large* and generally meant for outdoor mounting like a satellite dish you'd use with DirectTV. The antenna is only a couple of feet long but certainly not meant to be put on your shelf next to the gateway.