Slow 4G connection only, but only sometimes -- SOLVED

blue240sx44 wrote:

I have done multiple factory resets and even purchased a external router for wifi instead of using the built in wifi so all the ssids are turned off with a ethernet cable going to the router that i connect my wifi devices to.

There are two towers i connect to the daytime one that i get primary b71 with no secondary signal from even though the tower says it has it on cell mapper is about 3 miles north in a idk small populated area im on the outside of town i find it weird that it connects to the tower that is in a more populated area during the daytime i only get 2 bars of b71 never had a secondary connection from this tower there really isnt any tall buildings in the area .

The second tower i usally only get connected to at night with the b66 2 bars /n71 3 bars connection is 2 miles south maybe less i would be surprised if there was 500 people that lived within a 3 mile radius of that tower lol its all farmland basically. i do notice the b71 4g signal on the tower with no secondary connection is stronger usally by a couple digits than the tower with b66 4g so i think its choosing that tower witch idk seems broken or something as no data hardly gos through it lol

Also i just noticed my boost mobile phone that has been horrible for the last year comes up as t-mobile ip address on speed test and has the same horrible connection. before this boostmobile was on sprint network and i had great speeds on 4g always 50mbps and up with 5 bars of service-i thought t-mobile merged with sprint i dont seem to get access to those sprint towers anymore as the same phone and service only has 1-2 bars of signal now and has been ridiculously bad ever since this changed not sure if that means anything.

im just thinking the t-mobile service is really bad in the area along with every other provider-currently i am on visible wireless that uses verizon towers and has unlimited hotspot data i get ok ping 90-150 usally but speeds are often 1-3 mbps during peak hours but it always works and is pretty stable i only get 1 measly bar of service on this and the ping times are so much better it works like regular internet lol but i also game so downloading/updating doesnt get you very far at these speeds.

its weird because it seems like they have put up new cell towers all over around here but none of them are on cell maper and no provider seems to have good service in this area but im surrounded by towers maybe they are all causing interference or something im really confused about how i used to have great connection to sprint towers and t-mobile has those towers now but it seems that they have them turned off or something.

anyways sorry for the ramble i basically have given up and try not to think about it as much as i was and idk most likely will be returning it at some point-also there is probably a store for every provider you can think of within a few miles i just dont understand why they would have storefront in small areas with no service lol the only one i havnt tried is at&t they are supposed to be pretty good around here but idk its expensive i do plan on trying cricket or puretalkusa next month witch is based on at&t towers it just sucks because this all costs money weather the service works or not doesnt mean you get stuff for free.

You answered all the questions I asked, thanks, and like many people’s slow speed problems, yours sound mysterious and/or complex, and out of the realm of my own short time (I’m in my second week) of having T mobile home internet.

I'd like to remind anyone reading this that I created this thread to offer a suggestion to people who had a specific problem. That is, they get good speeds for their area, like 50+ download consistently on a primary and secondary signal, but occasionally they get switched to a primary-only 4G LTE signal which is much slower, or slower and glitchy (with lag), and they can't reboot the modem/router off it.

My suggestion is to move the router/modem to a place where it gets one bar or even two bars less signal, to see if when you reboot, it connects to the faster 5G primary and secondary pair, which is actually at 4G/5G pair of a "B" band with an "n" band. After it reboots to the faster speed paired signals/bands, you can then either leave the gateway where it is, or even move it back to where you get the best signal.

From a reader, I learned you can also temporarily knock a signal strength bar off your connection by covering it with foil (but don't block the vents on top) and then you can connect to the faster bands, and take the foil off. This might be necessary for people who have only the same signal available pretty much everywhere in their house and can't reduce it, even temporarily through placement.

What I lack in experience though, being retired and having time, before I got the 5G gateway and this service was even available in my area, I watched dozens of videos, and tried to read all the articles and about the experiences of people setting it up and using it.

Not only did I want to see patterns in people’s experiences how to get the best speed and signal I could in my situation, I thought it would be nice to help others starting out, that maybe have busy lives and aren’t retired with so much time to be reading about the experiences of others.

What I found in my reading of the experiences of others is that there are certain general patterns, like faster speeds as you get closer to a tower. Or people that connect to any B band paired to n41, usually get better speeds than people who get the B band paired to n71.

However, there are exceptions all over the place also, like people who have really bad connections who are less than a mile from the tower where they get the desirable n41 pairing. And some people with 200+ download speeds who are more than a few miles from a tower.

There are also people who get download speeds averaging over 100 for a few months, and then it  stops and they can’t get a good speed again and turn in their gateway.

Conversely, I've read of people who got low speeds on the first day of use, maybe 40 download, but then on the second day their speeds were doubled, to 80. One person had the n41 installed on their tower and their speed went way up.

I've read of some of the variables involved in the installation of new equipment, like it may take them time to tune the equipment (transceivers and antennas), and get the backhaul working properly. Backhaul is the connection between the tower and wireless equipment with the high speed, high capacity lines like fiber that connect to the internet through a substation or larger station.

In other words, it isn't just a matter of sticking the new equipment up in a few hours, turning it on, and bang, fast speeds for everyone. You can see the evolution of this on youtube by watching people, a year ago, very close to new installations of 5G, and they were getting speeds in the 50 to 100 download area, and a year later people who are close to towers can get between 200 and 600. Sometimes when the installation is new, like a few days old, the speed isn't fast. 

I read an article about a tiny town locally where only 30% of the residents can get any cell signal at all, and it is only if they have expensive boosters. The poorer people in town want a cell signal and from the time the town council approves getting a tower, it will take 4 years for the a company to build that small tower. This was a recent article. There are some residents who are objecting to the tower being unsightly.

But to your problems...it could be a tuning issue. The companies have their own challenges with a new technology like 5G. And there's an unknown in this I would very much like to know. That is, in the first wave of 100,000 users of T mobile home internet, how many found the service functional enough to keep. Is it 50%? Is it 90%?

And then there are the various standards of users, like the person who gets over 300 download, and for whom it is $30+ cheaper than their cable, but it’s totally unacceptable because it doesn’t work with Hulu. What I would say to those people is I understand your priorities, but maybe you should have spent an hour or two looking into this service before you ordered it, you would have found that it doesn’t work for Hulu.

But that's not your situation or the rest of us. It's the first year of their rollout, and we are all taking a risk, being the first ones in our neighborhoods in many cases to get this, in the case of rural areas.

Sure, it’s got to be massively disappointing, especially for people who have such problems like yours, but weren’t miles and miles from a tower or towers in your case.

For me, I expected a possibility of being disappointed, because my 4G phone sometimes gets only one bar, and my 3G phone used to drop calls unless I went outside. Instead, I'm relieved and delighted I get such good speed (average download of 90, never below 35), and I haven't gotten a one bar signal even once on the gateway. I get a steady three bars when the gateway is in the window, and two bars that work well in a few other places, the best of the two-bar spots being below the window.

And the window I use happens to be the one that is closest to the tower 5 miles away, where there is only one wall of my chicken wire and stucco (faux adobe) house to get to the signal through if it is below the window.The rest of the house shields me from connecting to the tower 10 miles away in another direction where I would probably get a slow speed. 

I presume that T mobile had enough success among their first 100,000 users, one-third which was rural with two-thirds city, that they will continue their expansion plans with 5G home internet.

A year from now more people will have 5G phones, and they won’t be the first in their neighborhoods finding out if T mobile home internet works for them.

About what you said at the end, that it all costs money to try. I agree it is a bad situation.

One commenter who was trying T mobile home internet, said that when he discontinued his high-speed cable service, they sent him an offer to reconnect for $20/month for one year. He was paying $110/month. So he's going to keep both his services, and see if his T mobile will get better maybe. Right now it was working well for a while, but started glitching out. He has that luxury.

Those kinds of offers are sometimes available to city and suburban people, but never to people in rural areas. As I have mentioned before, I was considering Starlink, but then the $500 for equipment and $100/month, keeping snow off the satellite dish in winter, slower speeds in the rain. I thought I'd wait.

T mobile has an offer for certain models of  iphone, that customers with any phone plan can download a special T mobile app and use T mobile's service for one month free, just to see how it is in their area. No signing up for anything, giving out credit card info or anything.

I consider your situation and story to be among the 10% worst cases, probably. But when you consider that 5G was hardly anywhere a year ago, and now it is all over, almost, even though there are pockets where it won't work or it's terrible, maybe in 6 months that will change.

In 2001, I was living in a more isolated area than I am now, and there was talk of the “last-mile” connectivity for rural users about a new wireless technology WiMax. For 8 years they were talking about it as a wireless solution for rural users, and it never went commercial in the US at all.  

5G is different. 5G is going to only get better and better from a technology standpoint. From a practical standpoint through, maybe with more people crowding the towers, that could still be a problem. But that shouldn't be the problem for rural users, only city users.

I think it would be nice if T mobile would at least tell you that if in a few months, they get the issues worked out in your area and speeds are up, they give you the offer of trying it free for a month, and if you like it, the $50 price, if that's what you were paying before. But they probably don't do stuff like that.

I felt like I was in the clutches of telephone companies decades ago, up until I ditched my landline. This is the first time I'm the one doing the clutching, hanging on to this amazing 5G service I get, hoping it continues through the future months and years.