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

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.

I more or less have the same issue and was also told 4Lte would be better. It was way worse.

I’m looking at ext or booster antenna as well as questioning why I dont have a secondary signal.

Also is there a better tower? 

They are mostly nice to deal with but I feel that we may not be getting the whole story.

Anybody have a hack to fix this?

@blue240sx44

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

How on earth did you disable the wifi router portion of the gateway? There's no option for that in the web ui…

Edit: Never mind, I’m an idiot LOL

@LPD155 Well that sucks to hear the lte gateway didnt help anything. I myself haven't even tried the my 5g device out today because its just to frustrating lol

I have been holding both the primary and secondary connections pretty steady for while not sure if the fan blowing in the bottom helped with that or not either way it doesnt really work during the day-it certainly seems like something t-mobile is doing on there end.

Im pretty sure i read somewhere that this home internet service  is the lowest priority service that is associated with t-mobile -meaning every other small offshoot cell phone brand like metro pcs and us mobile and a whole list of other small carriers get higher priority to the cell towers than t-mobile home internet users-this is outrageous to me-they offer a unlimited unthrottled service yet they make it so you cant actually use it a good portion of the time.

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. 

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.

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. 

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'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. 

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