Forum Discussion
Brand new to home Internet and hoping to improve speed
I read a bunch of the horror stories in here, but decided to try T-Mobile's home internet anyhow 'cause I ALSO read some of the "I get 200+ Mb/s and it NEVER drops below 100" topics. I'm in a town o...
If you get the PCI value you can search for it on CellMapper.net and locate the tower that serves that signal out. With a 4G LTE / 5G NR capable phone it should be possible to obtain the cellular metrics for both signals. The bars on the LED screen are rather generic and do not provide enough information. It does not sound like you are receiving a 5G signal with those speeds or it is a very poor signal reception.
You state you are using CellMapper on your phone so are you looking at 4G or 5G signaling or both?
With CellMapper.net in a browser you can provide your area code to get the general location and then display 4G LTE, 5G NR, or both. I find filtering for one or the other helpful. You will see more 4G LTE towers and IF the 5G cell you receive is on the map that really helps but CellMapper is not 100% as it does rely upon users using the Android application and uploading the findings to the server to have the data installed into the database. This does require an account but it does not cost anything to set up. CellMapper seems to be one of the best resources for locating the cells still. Below is a chart that will help you determine more about your cellular signals. Use the T-Mobile home internet mobile application on your phone to see the cellular metrics. Determine if you really are receiving a functional 5G signal.
I have three towers that are close - the closest is about 2 blocks and line of sight. Another is downtown, max ¼ mile and again line of sight. The third is a little farther away but probably an extra 2 blocks. I'm not sure which one provides the very high speeds I would see periodically with the 2 Sagemcom boxes. Support SAYS it's the one that's 2 blocks away.
I don’t know what tower the Arcadyan is using - it never hits the speeds the other boxes did, but it also doesn’t fall on it’s face a dozen times a day and go below 1 Mbps.
Like yours mine is "almost always +30 Mbps", though it'll get down to 20 for the lows. I can live with that. I'd prefer NOT to see numbers down below 10 Mbps, though SO FAR we haven't had an abnormal amount of buffering when streaming, and large-ish downloads on my computer have been reasonable.
What I’ve noticed today is that the average speed over the last 22 hours (midnight last night to 10 pm) has trended DOWN from a starting average of about 160 Mbps to less than 60 Mbps by 10 pm.
T-Mobile has said a couple times that these gateways need to be power-cycled weekly or at least every other week. It may become a Saturday morning thing to pull the plug for a minute.
BUT, the box has now made it through THREE days with no dreadful numbers and no crashes. If it makes it into tomorrow, we'll keep it and shut down the ancient DSL.
