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

I'm having EXACTLY the same issues you stated above.  Also using the NOK5G21 gateway, connecting B66 primary (5 bars) and n71 secondary (3 bars).  Countless tickets with tech support, nothing corrected, nothing resolved. Finally made complaint with FCC which prompted a call back from a "t-mobile senior customer service rep". This rep told me that my area is not compatible with the 5G gateway and I should not have been given option to use this unit. Apparently (according to him), the 5G signal keeps bumping the LTE signal offline, causing the unit to loose internet connection. He said this is a know problem in certain areas with this gateway.  He further said that the only remedy is to roll back to the older LTE gateway which will not be competing with two different bands.  I have one being sent to me now. I will test it once received and hopefully issues will be gone. I'm also expecting a little slower speeds compared to the 5G unit, but as long as the are fast enough for basic internet stuff, I'll take that trade off for a stable connection.  I'll try to post an update once I've tested the LTE gateway. 

Thanks for the update. I also wanted to add that I live in a rural area, mostly farms.  During one of my many tech support calls, I was told that a tower in the next town is off-line and all those customers have all been pushed to my tower, thereby possibly causing a congestion issue. I've been told so many different excuses by so many techs that I don't know what to believe anymore. My problems started earlier April and have continued ever since. Prior to April, everything was working great without issues.  This neighboring tower is still allegedly off-line, so not sure when or if it will ever be repaired. Even so, I'm not certain that my problems are even related this.  I'm loosing patients and running out of options.  I also wanted to add…T-Mobile home internet tech support is clueless. They are just trained to follow a step-by-step checklist that a 6th grade child can do. They are not "real" experts and definitely not engineers.  Because of this, we are all forced to get assistance from each other through these community forums.  I apologize that my frustration is coming out as I write this post. 

Hello thank you everyone for sharing there experience and i hope you all continue to give updates.

@LPD155 Im really curious that you say you weren't supposed to be on the 5 g device and that they recommend you roll back the 4g lte router-i was very surprised to see 5g in my area and its a pretty small area so i dont know how fast upgrades/updates would be coming around this area honestly ive had pretty good speeds on 4g myself 50-100 mbps and it was usually fairly stable so it would be really awesome if you could update back when you try it out- i think its pretty normal to be frustrated in situations when your constantly having issues with a service you pay for i too am having these feelings of frustration and im sure many more are as well.   

@justintyme2 Thats great to hear you are getting better service this past week-im hoping that they are just working on the towers in the area myself so im trying to be patient-i was actually on sprint a few years ago and it worked really good in my area then i switched to boost mobile that was on the sprint network-it worked really great up until…. the merger for some reason i never knew it was with t-mobile...my service has been horrible on that phone the past year although i read direct tv or dish network or something bought boost mobile so im not sure it was related to t-mobile-the ip comes up as t-mobile on speedtest this worries me because its been having really bad service for awhile now im hoping its not related to my current issues with home internet-i have pretty much all the same issues on this cell phone service hardly works

- the thing thats really weird is when sprint was involved i had full bars and great speeds/service on 4g i have heard recently t-mobile will be shutting off all the sprint towers this seems a bit crazy when some areas could have decent service using those towers and i worry the area im in wont be getting any upgrades for a long time im guessing ah well i guess im not sure exactly were i was going with that anymore Lol

So Saturday june 12th, i decided to try the router at 7 pm this normally doesnt work and i just switch back to my cell phone hotspot but it actually worked decently well good enough to watch hd streaming still would not work for gaming as the ping times just idk seem to be really terrible but it actually was functional and useable so thats a big step forward compared to previous attempts=0 connection basically maybe a webpage would load every 5 mins. 

I actually fell asleep with it streaming videos to my surprise it was still working when i woke up at 10 am i searched around and watched some random youtube videos-around 11 30 am i started getting alot of buffering and it did change towers/bands to b71 no secondary for a couple mins but went back to the other tower with b66 n71 bands connected still was buffering a lot at 480p so i switched back to my cell phone hotspot for the day-it does oddly seem to be getting slightly better everyday for some odd reason i feel like they got me on the nights and weekend plan by mistake lol 

Thanks again for sharing everyone please feel free to share/update/vent or give tips or ideas -i think it could help someone else possibly having problems and the more information thats out there the better in my opinion.

Well still very poor service pretty much almost 0 connection during daytime hours but somehow works at night seems to be getting worse though def slower then it used to be

although i think my highest tests are 60 mbps download and 1 mbps upload that happend once out of about 50 tests  lol i dont think ive gotten much over 5 mbps if im lucky and .05 mbps upload just seems insane i could see if this was the free emergency broadband or something but im paying for this service.

right now it cant even load a 144p youtube video without buffering although 98% during day hours it wont even do that.

honestly really disappointed still wont connect to the secondary signal 75% if the day really seems like they kick you off the better signal/tower not sure what else to say-- i feel cheated.

ah well i tried to unplug the 5g router for 10 mins again and see if it would connect back to the b66 n71 tower but it did not so i guess that i cant reproduce that so maybe overheating isnt the issue. 

this is the usual speedtest from this tower 

DOWNLOAD TEST ERROR

A socket error occurred during the download test. A firewall could be blocking the connection or the server might be having some issues. Please try again later. also the ping was 1468 before this message came up.

Im actually pretty into computers and def would not be willing to let anyone else do anything to my computer also these problems occur on multiple pc and cell phones and xbox smart tvs. 

i even have a computer i just built with a brand new install of windows and new parts get the same problems.

i also have done all the cmd prompt ip and dns configurations and resets and renewing/registering dns and ip basically every internet configuration thing i could possibly think to do ive done now im not a pro and consider myself to be mediocre at pc related stuff but yea idk ive been building pcs for a long time now and typically troubleshoot/fix family and friends pcs pretty regularly. to me its a problem between the router and the tower or some settings t-mobile only has access to. 

also i regularly take my pc to freinds/family for gaming and or to update games because the internet is to slow to download 100 gb in any sort of timely manner and i have no problems using other peoples internet connections.

i mostly use visible cell phones mobile hotspot for all my internet when im at home and have normal consistent internet its just capped at 5mbps for hotspot while i normally dont even get 5mbps its basically always 2-5 mbps or more and has always worked for general internet/video around 720p sometimes during peak times only 480p but this is also stated that its capped at 5mbps so i dont have the same expectations from a plan thats only offering 5mbps. im pretty sure t-mobile says that it shouldnt be less than 25mbps and that most people are getting 100 mbps or more. 

anyways i got this device through a chat box so i find it kind of off that they dont have chat support for it. and this should be a very simple plug and play thing to setup so yea idk if someone really needs to come out to do something to make this device work than they shouldnt be offering it to people and clearly it works really well for some so i just have to think its a local tower issue or the 5g router device is faulty.

i am going to get in contact with t-mobile sometime in the next week or 2 just have other stuff i have planned already and its kind of idk not really a huge priority as im already going to be billed again in a week so im stuck with it at least another 5 weeks in my mind maybe ill make it into town at some point and goto the t-mobile store maybe i can just exchange my router for a new one.

although i really feel like general t-mobile employees are not going to really help much i do think i need to at the very least get in touch with someone in the next week or 2 for one last effort and  if its not working or some kind of news of towers being worked on after that i will just have to settle with 5mbps visibles  cellphone as a hotspot.

yea i think there is a major design flaw or just a huge software/firmware issues causing it to idk do something to overwork itself its by far the hottest electronic device ive ever had without a fan i dont think it could possibly last very long i think it runs hotter than a good gaming graphics card even thats pulling 150 watts kind of crazy im really hoping i just got a bad device but im pretty sure almost every post ive seen has said its hot or they have a fan on it.

still not connected to any tower.

i read a post on reddit about a guy getting 4 replacements just sounds crazy and like there is a major issue with the device.

also i wish the firmware was available so you could try older versions easier or get the new updates released for download instead of them having to force it to your device at this point they must have so many complaints it has to be unreal so i would think they would be getting some really smart people to fix these problems but this service has been in testing for awhile it seems so im not really to sure how much they plan on doing it seems like its pretty low priority so far and really if my device is not faulty then there are some serious problems in my area with t-mobile service and thats ok i just wish they wouldnt of said i qualify if i dont for like a year every week or 2

i searched for new isp providers for the area even all cell phone hotspot plans everything nothing was really reasonable under 100$ a month is reasonable for me as long as the service lives up to expectations some problems are always expected and hopefully t-mobile is just having some temporary issues.

well i got the 5g gray unit last week and spent the last 2 weeks trying to get my cameras to be seen thru the device. the speed for me was around 100mbps on average. the thing had 4 bars no matter where i put it, but i think it may have had only 2 or 3 for real because i’m colorblind an if i held it a bit of an angle it almost looked like gray bars. anyway because i can’t get my cameras thru it it is not a real modem/gateway but kind of sounds like it is a hot spot as other here are saying. i tried the wife’s phone for getting on the internet and i can but again no cameras get thru.

now i did a coverage map and the tower is maybe a mile away and i’m on te edge of 5g and 4g. so i may have been on 4g the whole time. but for the 65$ they want and the speed being so variable and no cameras outside of my house it goes back this week. i suppose i will have to pay the whole charge of 55$ but now i know. one thing that has been talked abut here is if during the day the 5g starts getting busy and then my gateway takes second place over phones and the speed gets throttled back that will not do. so unless someone has figured out hot to get cameras thru the unit and can verify these gateways will not take a back seat to phones then i may keep it if not i will pay comcast and keep a stiff upper lip. thanks

For those who are still having connection issues, I will suggest external antenna. Its been a blessing for me. I have enjoyed consistently good signal since I introduced the external help.

There seems to be a fair number of home Internet customers who had good service a few months ago and now practically have no service. T-Mobile is just giving us the runaround, they give equivocating responses about congestion on their system,  which of course is their responsibility.

And finally they tell you they have no plans to improve their capacity, so if you don't like it you should leave. What's the contact point for the FCC Complaints? Has anyone contacted any other agencies or law offices yet?