5G UC 4 bars, "unlimited premium data " but network so congested its unuseable.
Last might I had a very important video stream I had to be on, the call of a lifetime. I am on magenta max, with unlimited premium data, no deprioritization. My phone shows 5G UC with 4/5 signal bars, yet embarrassingly, my network could not handle the stream. When I do a speed test, half the time it won't connect, when it does the jitter is extremely high, meaning the ping is going up and down wildly second by second, the download speed is anywhere between 20Mbps-140Mbps, but the upload speed is almost non existent. It's anywhere between 0.0-1.0 mbps, .2, .04, .02 etc. How embarrassing, we have to cancel the entitr event, and why? Because I'm on the T-Mobil network. The network at my home is ALWAYS congested during peek hours, but it's usually not quitethis bad. The only thing I can think is that they have been giving away so many cheap $100 phones on the metro network. Yes, I've heard the trick and yeah sometimes when the network slows down I can switch to the 4g lte and get a momentary return to connectivity. After about 10 minutes this usually slows down too and I can switch back and forth from 5g to 4g, sometimes it helps, sometimes not much. If I was on a cut rate carrier and paying $25 or $40 a month, it wouldn't be a big deal, but I'm not. You expect to get what you pay for, right? Even though I'm supposed to have network priority over those who pay $30-$50 a month because I'm paying double, it seems there are just so many of them it doesn't matter. I usedto be on the Meteo network and yeah, after 35gb you get deprioritized, it sucked but it was expected. Also, Im sure they would not admit to it but they also at times block certain online gaming servers. It won't connect, but when you flip on the VPN, it works no problem. Except using the VPN as a middle man makes the already mediocre speed just a but worse. I've seen them tell other users that it's a software glitch that will be fixed with the next update....nah. I get it, their network is congested and they are trying to open up capacity while inconveniencing the smallest number of users. This is more of an irritant than major issue. The network being so congested its unusable is a big deal. Now they say they are ramping up 5g mid band to more areas. Seems like they just care about getting everybody "covered" not that their network performs to expectations. Of course I've gone through tech support where they *reset* your connection. It works better for a couple hours, i think they are just temporarily giving you super prioritization on the network so you come absolutely first for a short time. Is there something I'm missing here? Is there nothing to do aside from seeing if another carrier's network is better in my area?Upload speeds much faster than download speeds
So I recently switched to T-Mobile Home internet since it advertises good speeds and no data caps. When I first set up the gateway, I was shocked. Speeds were blazing fast. I was consistently getting speeds between 70mbps and 170mbps. This went on for roughly 6 weeks, and then the service became completely unusable. Speeds were consistently below 1mbps and on a good day I could make it into the teens. I called customer support just about every day trying to sort things out, but got nowhere. Ifinally got a call from an engineer who said, "I should expect varying speeds based on my location" and closed out my case. Not a single person can tell me why everything worked so well but then tanked. I then called and had them send me a new gateway device. I set it up and speeds were again in the 60-100 range for about 2 days, and then went back to being unusable. I then started to notice that most tests showed my upload speeds to be significantly higher than my download. I also set up a fan to rule out overheating which has made little to no difference. Today, I decided to see if my signal could be the issue, so I drove to the base of the 5g tower in my city plugged in my gateway with full bars of connectivity and ran a speed test. My results showed my download speed at 2.62mbps and my upload at 59.3 mbps. I ran the test several times over about a 30 minute period on both mine and my wife's phone and got very similar results on every single test. I'm holding out for Starlink and will be abandoning TMobile as soon as possible if they can't resolve this issue, but in the mean time, I would like to know if anyone has any ideas as to why these speeds are so backwards or possibly have suggestions for things I can do to try to fix the issue myself.
Why T-Mobile??!
Signed up for T-Mobile Home Internet 3 months ago. First couple of weeks, fantastic. After that, began experiencing dropped connections every few hours. Figured it was the heat. Put the gateway on top of a 3" high egg rack with a 9" fan blowing on high at the gateway, and things stabilized so that we only had to reboot the gateway every couple of days in order to re-establish a connection. For the past month, however, things have been going sharply downhill. Over the past 2 weeks, internet has been completely unusable for streaming during 'peak" times (evenings /weekends). Today, internet has been totally unusable: download speed in teens and low 20's when it's "good", upload speed maxes out at 0.3 to 0.5. Speed test shows 96% loss. That's not a typo. Data consumption currently shows 118GB total combined usage for 2 phones and the gateway. Speed became unusable around the time we hit 100GB. However, we have regular "Home Internet" - NOT "Home Internet Lite". We were promised unlimited 5G Home Internet data with our 2-line Magenta Max plan. But T-mobile has fallen far short and is not delivering on its promises. It's so bad, T-Mobile is making even Spectrum look good. Tried to chat with support, and "Khasmirjoy" literally never even once responded to any question or comment in the chat, even though checkmarks appeared showing they'd been read. I have finally had enough and today signed up for AT&T 1Gig Fiber but that won't be installed until a week from today. We work from home and simply cannot go a full week with T-mobile's useless "internet". What I'd like to know is what is going on? Why does it seem that most people with T-Mobile Home Internet get the promised speeds for a month or two before T-Mo apparently begins throttling down so bad it becomes unusable? Why is support SOOOOO bad (nonexistent)? And 96% loss, seriously??!