Network has become unusable, and no one will help...
I used to have an amazing experience with 200MB or better download speeds over the last couple of years on T-Mobile in my NYC apartment. As an employee and ex-employee I have continued to promote T-Mobile to my friends and family. A couple of months ago, something changed. I show 5 bars of 5G and 5 bars of 4G service back and forth, but there arepractically zero services. The internet if I can even get it to register with a speed test, is 1 MB download speed at best - It's unusable, and phone calls connect, but the other party can't hear most of what I'm saying most of the time. This is on multiple lines on my account in my location and on my wife's phone on her own account also at this location. The issue is all around my neighborhood - approximately a2-3 block radius in every direction. Even my brother has these issues when he comes to visit. Something has changed on the network - not sure if it's 2 towers competing or what… Multiple calls to care and they keep troubleshooting my phone and sending resets to it. They're not listening to me when I tell them it's multiple lines on multiple accounts. They asked me to factory reset my phone (more than once) and like an idiot, I complied with these requests. Considering it's on multiple lines, and only an issue at my home leads me to the conclusion that it is NOT an issue with my Galaxy S22 Ultra, or my wifes iPhone 12+, or my LG V60+ or my brothers Pixel 7, or my Galaxy Watch 5 (with plan). Still, every call ends up with the same troubleshooting. They asked me if I have wifi and if I can connect to it. I said yes - my wifi works great. WiFi calling does NOT work any better though. And, I pay for phone service with high-speed data so I don't have to use my home WiFi. Still, I tried but no dice with making calls over WiFi calling. I finally grudgingly threatened to port out, and they instantly put me in touch with the next level of tech support. After an hour of rehashing everything, they opened up 2 network tickets. One for me, one for my wife. I haven't heard a peep from anyone, and the service is still unusable. So, what are my next steps? It's not just my home, so others must have complained in this area.
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??!
5G Promo Home Internet bandwidth really bad
I signed up for the 5G Home Internet $50/month, no limits, unlimited, etc. I was told that this was a first-come deal and I "got in." The program said to be restricting the number of users on the tower(s) so that it is not overloaded with traffic. Well, guess what. My 60-80 Mbps drops to 1-3 Mbps for the majority of the work day. So, pretty much useless...and not worth the $50. Has anyone had this problem and received any kind of explanation? They say they are monitoring the towers to make sure "bad actors/activity" is controlled (unattended bot use, humongous bandwidth hogging, etc.). This is not reliable for home-office use.