TMobile Home internet

I was doing some reading this afternoon on how cell towers work, as I'm just learning about all this stuff starting last month. I stumbled across some pieces of information which might conceivably account for someone a mile away from a tower not receiving good speed, although since Bill receives between 4 and 5 bars signal strength, and that's probably a better indicator of cell tower reach to his house than internet speed, then these two things probably don't apply to his situation.

High signal strength with poor speed usually means interference, either from obstructions or another tower’s signal, or from something like a nearby electrical power station.

Some towers have "directional characteristics," rather than being completely omnidirectional and transmitting equally in every degree of 360 degrees. So a person's house might be located in a sort of dead spot, because in that direction there is mostly nothing for miles.

Another possibility is a tower's power being turned down, so it doesn't have nearly as much reach as the average tower. This is very common in cities, that a tower gets turned down, when it interferes with the signal from a neighboring tower's cell (area of coverage). But it can also happen in rural areas for the same reason.

More than a few people who were in the rollout of this T mobile home internet, said they got good speed for a few weeks, or a few months, and then suddenly it dropped off and was really slow. One recent post from a guy in Brooklyn reported that on the second day of use, he got double the speed range of his first day of use. And I've read where some people's speeds got faster through their first weeks or months.

The Nokia gateway that T mobile uses has a maximum power draw of 36 watts. I've measured it only up to 25 watts, when it is busy streaming. It idles at 12 watts, like when you are surfing web pages and not using great volumes of data. This gives the gateway an advantage in signal strength over a cell phone, including the best $1000+ 5G phone you can buy. When a phone is very low on battery, it can have trouble reaching a tower that is far away. This gateway shouldn't have that problem it is plugged into the wall and has 36 watts at its disposal.

Wireless technology is advancing at a feverish pace though.It's only a matter of time before we all have very fast internet speeds through improved 5G technology. It is only just beginning.