Slow Home Internet

Hum… sounds as if there are significant obstructions for the signal delivery to the router from the tower. I agree that the penetration and range 600 MHz signal should have a pretty solid range out to ~10 miles without obstructions and line of sight. With the RSRQ on the secondary signal at -14 the signal quality is degraded. There could be significant obstructions for the signal delivery to the router. I considered a MIMO external antenna to boost the signal reception here and reduce the limitations of the router placement. Being 5.3 miles from the 5G tower puts us in the mid range but that is not bad here. The design of the "can" style router may not be good for some solutions. If you have a 5G phone when the router drops the n71 channel check and see if the phone sees 5G or not. When calling T-Mobile support I discovered they had other complaints that related to that tower. They did work on the equipment on the tower and the signal drops have not been a major issue since. I did suspect this router or the software upgrade that it took but after the work on the tower equipment operations improved back to the 5 month period prior to the month of chaos. I investigated the possibility of heat related influence and even put the router outside on a day when it was 88 degrees and it did not have any issue or have any over temp alarms. If it does have temperature problems it should provide the alarm when the LED menu panel on top of the router is used. Unfortunately the software interface via the web has no temperature reporting.

If you are interested go to waveform.com and to their hotspot guides and check out the "T-Mobile High Speed 5G Internet Gateway External Antenna Guide" According to waveform improving signal quality is the best way to improve data rates. If the signal is cleaned up the data rates should improve as there would be fewer retransmissions due to packet damage. Their guide is fairly informative and is worth the time to read. They provide free shipping for orders over $100 and "Easy Returns" with satisfaction guaranteed. I have not confirmed all that but I have been considering the external MIMO antenna as placement of the router in the bathroom window on the NE corner of the house is not very convenient plus the moisture would probably not be good for the router either. Sending the WIFI signal across the length of the house also makes it a less attractive solution. I am thinking the external antenna is a better option for me as the 802.11ax from the Nokia router is actually working fairly well. The choke point will always be the signal to the tower.