Poor Internet speed and not reliabity

Timsw - It is actually good to hear others feel the same way about the excessive nags about the solution. Communicate to the CEO, law suits, yada, yada… move on. It is an internet solution and there are MANY bigger issues out there vs getting all twisted up about an internet solution that is newer cutting edge tech that is having growing pains. T-Mobile has fought as the underdog for years and is pushing hard to take a bite out of AT&T and Verizion. I for one am glad they are. I have had a pretty positive experience with the home internet solution here and only in July did it go wonkey but that was NOT the router it was equipment on the tower. Sometimes things are not spot on and need a tune up. The T-Mobile engineers worked on the tower equipment and it improved and became stable again. Even with only the n71 bands it is a big improvement over DSL with a contract and what not. This was our only real option here. Satellite internet  was not going to happen for me. I know better. Starlink was too much investment and not available here so the T-Mobile solution is a win. It is not perfect but noting on this earth ever will be.

ka79535 wrote:

Maybe T-mobile should adjust their maps to reflect reality and maybe consider setting a lower expectation for customers….especially in rural areas. I am 2 miles from the tower and cannot get a 5g signal on the router. ...plus, I only get 2 bars.

Except for a few people who were on the white 4G router/modem and asked to be grandfathered to the 5G gray cylinder, to be eligible for the 5G gray cylinder there is supposed to be 5G service in your area, and I believe you when you say it is on your map as such, but that you aren’t getting it.

I found the 4G map to be wrong about my brother's house, in that it said it was a level or two better service than  the 4G speed at my house, but I tested it on my phone and it was much slower speed, including when I was outside his house in an open park. I suspect the issue at my brother's house is there is a large electrical power station between his house and the tower.

Two bars is not the whole issue as far as speed goes or the ability to connect to 5G, as it is possible to get speeds over 200 on two bars of signal strength on the n41 5G band. If your tower has the longer range n71, and are two miles away, the highest speeds on that at 2 miles away might be in the 100 to 150 range at best, and probably under 100, since the max speed (50 feet away from the tower) on that is 225 whereas n41 max speed is like 700 or more.

Tmobile says they have availability of 5G home internet to 80 million households in the US, and the initial rollout of the 5G home internet was to 100,000 people. I'd guess they are up to 300,000 users by now, the vast majority who are happy enough with it to keep it. How could I make such a ridiculous claim when it seems like so many people here have problems?

Because over the three months I've had this, on this message board, sometimes there are only like 5 new messages about Tmobile home internet in a day, and not all about slow speed. So if it's really a serious problem for a significant number of people, why don't more people post here to complain or ask questions about their problem? After all, calling in for help results in a wait of hours, or waiting for a call back at times. To me, that means the vast majority must have an adequate experience with it.

Although you said you had Tmobile phone for years, you didn't say how long you've had the home internet service. If it is only a week or two, it might be worth it to wait a little longer before you ditch it, to see if they have been working on the equipment at your tower. I know for a fact they are swapping out some of the n71 transceivers for the faster n41, or adding the n41 to towers, so they've been very busy in their expansion, equipment tuning, erecting new towers etc.

When new equipment is installed, they sometimes start it on a lower power, to test signal conflicts or other issues, before they ramp it up to a point where it might work well at your house. There is also tuning that is done. So these are things which might leave you stuck on the old 4G until they get it going.

I'm told that there are towers very close to my residence.  I will try your suggestions when experiencing problems.  Today my speed test reveals less than 10 mbs on the 2.4 ghz and less than 5 mbs on the 5 ghz connection.   Thanks for your response.

Seems like too much work to chase down why buffering is constant. 30 plus days on the system and I am ready to go back to Comcast. That is how bad the service is. I am getting to the point of dropping the phone as well (17 years )  They said it was great, not so much. You get the rest of my month and without improvement I'll drop you just like my connection during a football game,  Thanks for nothing.

Feels so good to say as much,

PS I am pissed that I have to peck around and call people for something I am not getting.

Over and out

Switched to T-Mobile because maps showed good coverage and a better price.  Was wrong about the coverage.  When talking to customer service was told it was an issue with the towers near me.  That was in October.  In February still having the same issues.  Now they tell me they the problem will be resolved when they put in a new tower nearer our location.  Will see how that works.

I reported to FCC T-mobile told them they are fixing the services. they lied to them. T-Mobile is the worst. don't trust them. 

great service yea

Your issues sound as bad as mine. I have had as many as 7 outages/Hr. I am very lucky to get a whole hour without being dropped. My file is up to about 2 months now. The service was fantastic when I got it around the beginning of July. Then October came and the disconnecting is now unbearable. I don't think I have gone 1 day without multiple disconnects. Customer service says its a tower issue, the tower is getting upgraded, cycle power to the router, reset the router. Even this does not get me back on-line most of the time now. It's mostly until I call them and get passed on to an "expert technician" who can get me on-line by doing something on his end and it is very temporary at best.

 There is never a notification or a completion date for any "tower repairs" or "upgrades". I called them 3 times yesterday evening. The router always has 3 bars, WI-FI devices are connected but there is no internet. We both need the service for some of our work and it is less and less reliable. Heck I have not seen a full 30 minute news cast since I don't know when.

I know there are people at T-Mobile who know the reasons for this and also the solutions for this. Will we get the answers and resolutions? So far it is the same old same old going on nearly 2 months. This would be a great time time to hear from a T-Mobile engineer on this issue.

roninaz You are not alone in your quest for internet nirvana. It would help to know details as to what your  gateway router reports in the web UI interface. I will assume you have been over this with the T-Mo support engineers but it is hard to help without data. 

The LED display on the top of the router can provide some idea but not much detail about what is going on with the communication to the tower. The web UI at 192.168.12.1 will help much more.

Sugerencias:

Record the reporting of the primary & secondary signals from the Información general>Internet Connection

Record the reporting of the primary & secondary signals from the Estado>Cellular network section

Confirm if there are packet drops or errors from the Estadísticas>Cellular information

Do you know where the tower is; how far away it is...?

Snips of information from the web page are sufficient. It is pretty easy and helpful to make screen clips of data from the Overview, Status, & Statistics pages in the web UI and make a quick document with that info and then attach the info to the post. With more info I would be happy to make some additionalsuggestions.

So with only 10mbs and 5mbs you don't see that as a problem? From what I get here that is totally lame. You should be able to run a speed test and obtain download and upload speeds way better than that. You can know where the towers are using cellmapper.net. If you match the PCI info for each of the primary and secondary signals to the PCI info the tower(s) report you will know. This would help you optimize your router placement to do much better than that. 

I am fortunate to have a pretty solid connection. I commonly get 120 Mbs down and 40-50 Mbs upload. The solution can and should do way better than that.

If the problem is local WIFI then well that is yet another problem to resolve. If you have the time and want to post some data great. It does help to get more eyes on the problems. Good luck

roninaz wrote:

I have had home internet for 30+ days.  The speed and reliability has not been consistent.  I have seen speed from 80 ~ 100 mbs and then have seen speed from 1 ~ 5 mbs.  Also while streaming Netflix and Prime we have seen buffering and sometimes the movie locks up and I have to restart the movie.  My Sonos One device keep disconnecting due to slow internet speed (speed test was less than 1 mbs).

The disparity between getting a connection speed of 80 to 100 at times and 1 to 5 at others is probably too great to be congestion/traffic. It's possible when you are stuck on the slow speed (which often means frequent internet disconnection) it could be that you are connecting to 4G only, instead of the 4G/5G non-standalone signal pair that constitutes 5G, with the 5G signal being an n71 or an n41, depending on what is on your tower.

The essential thing to try is finding a gateway placement in your house that helps you connect at the fastest speed range possible. If you don't know where your tower is, that's okay, but then try placing the gateway in various windows, or as high as  you can, like in the attic, and include various rotation angles. Each time a position change is made with the gateway you restart the gateway via the button on the side, wait two minutes for it to reconnect automatically and do a speed test. You're looking for a location/position of the gateway that will maintain the highest speed range, which usually, but not always, goes along with the highest number of bars of signal strength available in your house.

What I mean by rotation angle is the gateway can be rotated in place, and because it has 4 little antennas inside, their orientation can make a significant difference in what signal bands you are connecting to. That can make a speed difference.

The nature of this beast called 5G cellular is a neighbor three houses away up a hill near you may get a great connection while your geographic position and elevation, just behind a hill between you and the tower, means your connection is bad. 

I live in a rural area 5 miles from the tower, and get an average of 150 download, often over 200, whereas on DSL I was in the single digit speeds, with a 1 for an upload, and paying $45 for that. I understand what it would be like for you, hoping for the 100 that "most customers," or "some customers" get, or however it is worded in their ads.

Besides distance to tower and number of obstructions, other factors can come into play in how good the reception is at your particular house. Even if 30% of their customers are a fail, it just doesn't work well at all for them, turn back their equipment, T mobile will still be raking in huge profits.I stuck with stupid CenturyLink for 12 years,having to call them every year or so to negotiate a more reasonable price for the slow connection I was getting, and so Tmobile's flat $50 forever price, and the way I've already had one significant speed boost in the last three months, it has been unbelievable, almost.

I'm just a customer, and It's not that I mind people airing their frustrations against Tmobile -- this is probably as good a place as any to air your frustrations -- but I think sometimes people are causing themselves excess frustration by demanding to communicate directly  with the CEO -- not that you did that  -- or thinking a massive corporation actually cares about the plight of individual customers and their internet problems. Tmobile often has the highest customer satisfaction among cellular providers.

In fact, I kind of sympathize with your particular problem, of getting good speed sometimes, and then it just being horrible at other times. Therefore, I posted this and hope something I suggested helps you.