T-mobile 5g home internet forcing to tower with no data issues/changing towers/bands

Cell phones get top priority once utilization reaches a certain threshold.  Don't know what that level is exactly, but home internet packets will get heavily queued when it happens (you can see the jitter factors go through the roof when it kicks in).  If it holds them long enough you risk timeouts depending on the application's tolerance for delayed packets.

Thus, the <usual> culprit is the congestion level.  Not necessarily for the wireless, but it can also be on the back haul as well.  A single tower can host multiple bands at the same location, all feeding into the same upstream pipeline.  Which can lead to a massive chokepoint under high utilization.

As a result, lately TMO seems to be wrangling with a capacity issue more so than coverage.

From What I have read or seen on YouTube is that it depends on the time of day and on the traffic coming from the tower.  That is what I have been hearing. Remember that this is also a mobile Internet service not your regular Internet service coming from Xfinity or Verizon Fios. The speeds will vary based on the time of day.

Hello! thanks for a response-honestly i do think some of it is congestion/time of day but the service doesnt even load a webpage or connect to there own website 98% of the time.

I have used phone mobile hotspots for my internet the last 3-4 years and nothing has worked this poorly to be honest to even read and type this im on my visable cell phone hotspot and it works great it is just slower 1-5 mbps during the day but it is constant and there is not any delays or disconections at all 0- i also only get 1 little tiny bar of service on this cell phone also the ping stays between 90-200 usally.

on this t-mobile 5g internet it just doesnt seem to be able to make a connection to any websites or even perform a speedtest the majority of the time and when it does work theres just this weird delay like i click on something and 10 seconds later the page loads ping times on fast are measured in seconds not ms so there seems to be some sort of huge delay somewere along the line.

i do seem to be holding the b66 and n71 bands after a factory reset even during the day today but it still is not connecting to most websites or steam/xbox live im sure if i tried and sort of zoom call it would not work as well like i said i cant even get on t-mobiles website with it-

also the upload speed seems to not work at all like its not letting any uploads go through when i do get a speedtest or fast to work the upload speed is like 50kbps and usally it says 0 and errors out the test.

anyways i dont think they should be advertising it as home internet and really i think its probably working worse then a cell phone hotspot plan it seems really odd i still havnt called customer support but i will have to one of these days. 

Gracias 

Yea i wish i could actually get a web page to load while im connected to the 5g router after messing with it for a hour or 2 again nothing couldnt load a webpage the whole time my xbox says i need to contact my isp and windows says my router or access point is the issue.

i mean i get slowing things down but it straight up wont even load anything today but its connected on primary and secondary to what was the good tower b66 primary and n71 secondary so it doesnt seem to be a tower/band problem i dont think 

also i live in a pretty small area its mostly farm land and most people around here hate t-mobile lol and use verizon or at&t so i thought the congestion would be lower also those providers do not offer any of there home internet solutions where im at

the only thing i found is the visible cell phone with unlimited hotspot and honestly its 10000 times better than this even at 1 mbps this is not even functional- im really starting to think the router i got might just be a dud as well although its weird that its worked ok after midnight -6 am so maybe there just blocking my connection 70% of the day

i feel like i have fairly low expectations to be honest  im looking for a 5-10 mbps connection it wont even connect to anything to get a speed test anymore. i also find it really weird how low the upload is and seems like a serious problem like non of my requests are even getting through the router when i use it at night

i will have like 3 gb of download data used and 4 mb of upload and tons of sent errors in the statistics when i have got the upload to register on a speed test it is usually 50-100 kbps this seems like it would cause alot of issues. 

its just so disappointing and sounds crazy that they prioritize the cell phones that have throttling and limited data but basically block the service that is advertised as unthrottled and unlimited i guess they just straight up block your service instead.

the only other thing i can come up with is my router is broken. ive probably spent 20-30 hours troubleshooting this in the last 3 days between all the reading and moving it around changing settings a mtu size looking for best signals tracking down the towers and factory resets- rebooting i have a external router coming today

i will try the ethernet connection to the router and turn off all the wifi ssid on the t-mobile router and see if it will work like that but so far i just dont even know what to say im shocked at this to be honest

its broken is my opinion weather its the router thats broken or its t-mobiles severice i do not know yet 

I just want to reply to this thread and update my own experience. Even though the router still has its own issues, my service has improved drastically this past week. It seems that they have or are in the process of upgrading the towers in my area. My phones and home internet have been connecting to several bands I've never seen before. My speeds are ranging from 15 mbs to 150mbs consistently, even when it's back on band 12. I was lucky to get 1mbs before. My cell phone was barely working (5g), my tablet (4g) seemed to be better. Our work cell phones (Sprint) have been horrible, even after the new sim cards and upgrading the phones. Whatever they are doing is starting to show improved service and speeds. The connection seems to be much more stable on all devices. I was really hating T-Mobile recently. I hope this continues and improves. I haven't returned my white LTE Gateway yet because the new router seemed so bad. I hooked it back up the other night and realized that most of my issues recently are the actual towers. How the High Speed Gateway is working so much better and improved from when I first got it. This doesn't fix everything and I'm hoping they continue to upgrade the firmware to allow us to change important settings. 

I received the LTE gateway…nothing good to report. I'm getting about 5Mbps (and below) down and about the same up.  I think my T-Mobile home internet experience is coming to an end very soon. I can no longer telework with these horrendous internet connections. The 5G gateway continues to loose connection with the tower (even though I have 5 bars primary and 3 bars secondary connections).  Now with the LTE gateway being a bust…I think it's time to go back to my previous fixed wireless. Never thought it would come to that. I have 3 ISP options where I live…satellite (not Starlink), fixed wireless & T-Mobile home internet. The satellite was absolutely terrible with high latency and data cap throttle back, this was a big show stopper. Fixed wireless was somewhat stable at around 15-20 down & 5 up with numerous weather related outages.  T-Mobile now has very unstable connections with no improvement in site. T-Mobile refuses to acknowledge that there is a problem with their tower, which means that'll never fix it.  So again, my T-Mobile home internet experience is coming to an end.  I'll go back to fixed wireless and wait for Starlink to come online. 

It’s depressing to see someone make a post a year ago, for the exact same problem I currently have

update-I did a factory reset and also added a computer fan on the bottom it does seem to be staying on the right bands now but i still am having very inconsistent well basically it consistently doesnt work lol.

i notice in the statistics im getting alot of sent errors ive tried changing the ssid and disabling it so im only on 2.4ghz or only on 5g or both most of the time i cant even load a webpage and had to resort to my phones mobile hotspot just to get on this page again.

the 5g router seems like its constantly dropping signals or something most of the time the error says connection interrupted or dns proxy errors. this is just working so bad i im not sure if my 5g silver router is even functional-its just weird that it works fine all night long but it doesnt work at all during the day it really seems like t-mobile is stopping the connection.

 the fan on the bottom made this thing run cool to the touch-it was very warm almost hot before the fan was added.

im not really sure what to say or do anymore im really frustrated at this point i should be getting a external router today to try and use a eithernet to the external router and run all my connections off of that this 5g router doesnt seem to be stable at all-how does it work at night but not during the day? this is ridiculous to me lol

Might fair better if you can get them to put you on the 4g whitebox.  A lot of people seem to be having issues specific to those gray 5g units.

I am equidistant to several sites, and while I sometimes may notice a pause when it flips towers, it usually isn't bad enough to throw me out of stuff.

Keep in mind also that their 5g is NOT standalone... meaning you are still reliant on 4g even when using 5g (ie, can still be prone to the same congestion issues regardless).

Also note that this is the lower bands for 5g in most cases, not the higher mm wave option (average throughout throughout the day has been seen to be considerably less than a 100mbps difference in some cases).

In other words, some people are really only experiencing a dramatic difference when traffic is considerably lighter... during the day and other peak time frames they are performing pretty close to each other in overall throughput over time.

So just to update-I purchased a external router and shut off all the wifi on the t-mobile router and just ran the ethernet to the external router and used that for wifi i dont get any of the sent errors anymore that i was getting when using the wifi on the t-mobile router on the statistics section-still no internet during the day

again i have 0 connectivity today worked all night long after 10 pm getting about 40mbps download and .50 kbps upload...extremely slow upload in all cases so far and basically only a connection availible for 8 hours a night then they stop all the data from getting through like they flip a switch everything disconnects like xbox live/steam anything you were watching or loading at the time and doesnt come back till around 10 pm regardless of how many times you factory reset or move the device around

the device is staying connected to the primary and secondary pretty much the whole time now from what i can tell. 

 so to compare right now i have to use my visible cell phone mobile hotspot that has 1 bar of signal and just got a 3 mbps download and 1 mbps upload and 130 ping(at night this also works much better up to 30-40mbps) and its working 1000x better than the t-mobile home internet and even if its slow the ping doesnt ever go past 200-300 in a spike even when the t-mobile home internet is working at night there is a really strange delay in everything that i have never experienced on any internet connection not even dial up

i know this is harsh but dial up is actually going to give me a better gaming experience than the t-mobile home internet service im getting right now on dial up i had steady 250 ping t-mobile is seconds before your request even gets through-you click a webpage and you dont even know if your mouse click went threw or not it just hangs then 5 seconds later then page changes and starts loading you can also still web browse on dial up 24 hours  a day lol not just 8 hours a night.

so clearly some people are having pretty huge issues getting any connection at all and some people are upset about having 50 mbps and not 300 lol ive always had really poor internet and this is by far the worst experience ive ever had with just general web browsing - not to mention it will not hold a stable connection to any game even at night time.

i really hope it doesnt seem like im bashing this to hard i really want this to work out and i hope something is going to change but honestly im pretty broke right now and i was supposed to drop what i use currently for internet to pay for this but the t-mobile internet is not ready and honestly i feel like until i get 24 hours a day service i should not being paying 50$ a month for internet 8 hours a day that is limited to streaming movies and web browsing-no gaming usally wont even connect to steam so i cant even open the games without the connection.

im trying to put my experience out there and what i have tried/used myself so others can possibly make a more informed decision and also so i might get some help - sorry for the grammar as well lol ive wrote more in the last 3 days then i have in the last 5 years put together -Thanks