weak signal

Letty1953 wrote:

I have had t mobile almost a year no issues. Monday morning the signal went weak and has been since. No bad weather no power surges. They sent new gateway nothing changed. I moved it to every spot the app shows is a good place nothing. Now they are sending new sims card but I asked IT people they said rare that this is issue I work from home it's so slow and freezes constantly. Can't get tv I stream and my ring cameras don't work. Any ideas I don't want to change but will 

 

I've had the Home internet for a while now and have consistently had connectivity issues! My app for the internet has always said poor or weak signal strength. I've moved the gateway to all different areas of my home and still the same issue. I'm thinking I need a new upgraded gates device because I also work from home and it's nothing but issues, especially in the summer months when kids are home and using other devices. 

I'm also now experiencing weak signal strength and low data rates after about 5 months of a very satisfying experience. I'm told that there is local network congestion and the problem won't be resolved for months. I suspect that my gateway's priority has been assigned to another tower that is further away. This is VERY frustrating and unsatisfying because my internet connection is unreliable and frequently slow. It's rather unacceptable for T-Mobile to continue to market a service that it cannot adequately maintain. 

If it has been working for a year with no issues clearly things have changed. It may well be they are upgrading the equipment in the area and this is not uncommon to see disruptions as they work on the equipment during the days in the work week without any advanced notification to users in an area. My guess you are not alone and others in the area are possibly seen the same behavior. It sounds as if you have been in touch with customer support now. Have you been provided assistance above the initial level 1 engineers on the phone? You might need to push a bit harder to get a second tier support person involved and ask MORE questions. Tell them you would appreciate it if they would look closely at the connection information for your service. It might be apparent from their logs why things are poor now. If you are told there is maintenance work or upgrades being done press for a bit more information. Try to get better expectations. You might need to ask to talk with a customer retention specialists and explain to them that you need to have it resolved or you have to consider other options.

With the IMEI information they should be able to find the cell that is on. Heck with the metrics that include the PCI, physical cell identifier, they should be able to nail it down exactly. Im no professional cellular engineer and I can figure that out.

I had Sprint for years, I love Sprint. Sprint had excellent customer service, great phone service, easy repair or replacement. I really felt when merged with T-Mobile, it was going to be even better. I'm 50yrs old, have had several cell phones and different providers. I've had T-Mobile several years ago and remember it being okay. This is the absolute worse, I mean extremely worst cell service I've ever experienced. The signal is horrific, it comes and goes constantly, drops my calls after a few min. I've called, called, called was told different things, then recently some very arrogant agent, who miraculously kept my call from dropping while on his call, told me it's because I drive a lot. I'm a family therapist and do drive often, around the counties surrounding me. When I had Sprint, I was driving around the country without issue. To add tonight, I did an arrangement on my bill and this evening went ahead with a payment. Went back to ensure could change the arrangement, well I can't. Went to chat, waited over 30 min. The experience getting my daughter screen replaced was another nightmare, file claim, wait 24-48 hours to approve.  Then call some store and make arrangements with them to fix when able. With Sprint, i just walked in. The T-Mobile store said since merged, they can't handle in store repair, so it's out sourced.

I'm looking at another provider, I think T-Mobile just got to big to really care or even help. Good luck to those who stay 

Thank you for reply I have talked to tech support 3 times now another gateway is being sent this will be the 2nd one. According to them the tower is very close to me I should have excellent service. No one can tell me if my gateway is even pinging off that tower seems like it should be. There is no work or maintenance being performed on tower. I don't understand why no one can find the issue. Unfortunately I do not know anyone in my area that has t mobile to check to see if they are having issues. Any one in this community in Spring Hill Florida? 
 

Ok so I used to be a network professional before I retired but not for cellular tech. I taught myself most of what I know which is enough to figure out a pretty fair amount about the cellular signals and what to expect from the service delivery with the metrics. The level 1 phone technicians are just there to field the low level front end calls. When it gets deeper into technical information a level 2 or above is commonly needed. I have encountered a few good ones here and there and others that just are going by the scripts and doing their best to do what is expected. I don't know that they get sufficient training. Keeping L1 techs in the same position in a support center for any length of time is difficult. 

The signal strength has now miraculously been restored but the throughput is all over the map. It can vary from 300 mbps to 3 mbps and vice versa in minutes. Sometimes a reboot helps but it doesn't always last. As much as I dislike Comcast,  I'm considering going back to cable. Too bad. I've been enjoying cable freedom. 

I have had the 5g home internet for about 6 months now,  started out great,  had excellent signal,  fast speeds,  never any buffering on streaming or anything,  all with 19 devices using it including security cameras,  smart home switches,  outlets, tablets,  TV service but suddenly for the past 2 months my signal in the mornings up until around noon is terrible,  I can't even use my tablet without having to wait forever for images to load,  brings back traumatic memories of dial up, I have ordered an external antenna as t-mobile hasn't seemed to be able to help,  it should be here tomorrow and I will see how that goes,  even in the evenings when my gateway says very good signal the speeds are still a little slow and are sporadic as in up and down and not just a little bit up and down I'm talking from the bottom to the top,  and what is strange is from what t-mobile tells me the network is more jambed from mid day until late evening than it is in the mornings due to so many people using it 

Do you have good signal?  I.e. Using the TMHI app, you should be able to check the signal.  'Very Good' may be on the LTE side, and you might be pushed to N71 vs. N41 5G.  Typically that drops my speed by more than ½ form 400Mbps to ~170Mbps with 'Good'.   Of course, if I open the window, SINR goes from 14dBm to ~22dBm and speeds can go from ~400/20Mbps to 550/55Mbps.

If this is network 'congestion', its more likely deprioritization.   I wouldn't recommend the antenna unless you're serious on getting 'excellent' signal.  Similarly, I'd almost wait on the antenna until the newer models that support it out of the box are shipped.