T-Mobile home internet - any users?

[maflynn]

Any one using T-Mobile home internet here?

Thoughts on them, both from a customer service perspective and quality of product?

I'm seriously thinking of cancelling my comcast internet and getting this.

I've been having problems with comcast these past few months. I was paying/getting about 900Mbs but then it dropped down to 550Mbs. Lately I'm seeing 250Mbs, maybe 300Mbs in early mornings/evenings, during the day that speed drops to about 90Mbs (and even slower) and that's painful.

I think its my neighbor (or even neighbors), he revamped his home network with separate lines for video cameras and home internet. Since then my broadband has plummeted. His kids play a lot of games online (4 boys each with their own pc/console), and I suspect that may also be a cause, i.e., summer vacation.

Anyways, I need something a bit more consistent and wanted to hear some feedback from any T-Mobile home internet customers. I have an older Orbi mesh network (RBR50), how does the 5G gateway/Mesh extender compare to that? Any suggestions or complaints or gotchas I need to worry about

 

[edubfromktown]

I've eyed TMobile Internet for a while (and also use Ccast Internet now). I get 675 Mbps down / 17.7 up which is fine for me, just expensive bundled services.

You may want to check https://thousandeyes.com/outages to see if there are issues in your area.

The other thing I'd do is run periodic traceroute to 9.9.9.9 or 1.1.1.1 and see if there is a high latency hop within Ccast network or elsewhere.

I've called and complained a few times in the past when I encountered very rare sluggish throughout that seemed to be chronic. In both instances it was a hop on their network.

They eventually resolved it after multiple support calls

 

[eyoungren]

I am a T-Mobile customer, but not their internet. I do see posts about TMHI in the T-Mobile subreddit though, so here are some facts based on what I have read.

1. TMHI data is last priority. It is the excess cellular capacity that T-Mobile is offering. Your data gets served last, behind even the data of MVNOs. This doesn't so much matter on towers that are not congested, but you will be deprioritized the moment there is congestion.

2. It's all IPv6, no IPv4. If you do any sort of port-forwarding for anything you can forget about doing that on TMHI.

3. Latency for online gaming is high. You can work around this and #2 by using a VPN however.

4. Just as with a cellphone, if you depend on uptime, consistency, stability and speed for your home internet then you take your chances. Some have had reliable TMHI for quite some time, then one day it just stopped working as well - because the cell tower got congested. Some have reported that speeds conk out at roughly the same time every day. Again, because of congestion.

5. There can be significant issues with the device T-Mobile provides. It needs to be located in an area that gets the best reception. That area may not be convenient. Also, the quality of the device is often in question. One model is notorious for not working or breaking down, the other is merely decent. It just depends on what they send you.

TMHI is inexpensive, but it's really just an alternative for rural areas and for people who don't work from home or have their livelihood depend on their internet. The reality is that this is just cellular signal, the same signal your phone gets. So, it's subject to the same issues your cellphone may or may not have with signal.

Some people haven't experienced at all a single problem I have just mentioned. So, it just depends.

Note, there is a TMHI subreddit on reddit.com. That might be worth checking out.

 

[maflynn]

Thanks for the info, I'll look at both suggestions, and its good to know about the prioritization of t-mobile's traffic.

 

[jz0309]

I am a T-Mobile customer, but not their internet. I do see posts about TMHI in the T-Mobile subreddit though, so here are some facts based on what I have read.

1. TMHI data is last priority. It is the excess cellular capacity that T-Mobile is offering. Your data gets served last, behind even the data of MVNOs. This doesn't so much matter on towers that are not congested, but you will be deprioritized the moment there is congestion.

2. It's all IPv6, no IPv4. If you do any sort of port-forwarding for anything you can forget about doing that on TMHI.

3. Latency for online gaming is high. You can work around this and #2 by using a VPN however.

4. Just as with a cellphone, if you depend on uptime, consistency, stability and speed for your home internet then you take your chances. Some have had reliable TMHI for quite some time, then one day it just stopped working as well - because the cell tower got congested. Some have reported that speeds conk out at roughly the same time every day. Again, because of congestion.

5. There can be significant issues with the device T-Mobile provides. It needs to be located in an area that gets the best reception. That area may not be convenient. Also, the quality of the device is often in question. One model is notorious for not working or breaking down, the other is merely decent. It just depends on what they send you.

TMHI is inexpensive, but it's really just an alternative for rural areas and for people who don't work from home or have their livelihood depend on their internet. The reality is that this is just cellular signal, the same signal your phone gets. So, it's subject to the same issues your cellphone may or may not have with signal.

Some people haven't experienced at all a single problem I have just mentioned. So, it just depends.

Note, there is a TMHI subreddit on reddit.com. That might be worth checking out.

interesting, I wasn't really aware of that service and though it might be cellular (I do have TMobile cell service)
So I checked it out it asked for my address and came back "not available in your area yet".
That makes me wonder whether it is really cellular?
I do get "5GUC" service at home and my download speed is typically 500-600Mbps and upload 10-20, 13PM. That's as good as my phone can do pretty much.

@maflynn at least in the last 2 locations I lived in CA we had more than 1 ISP option, eg right now I have Frontier FIOS but I could also have Spectrum - have you checked for all ISPs in your area?

 

[maflynn]

have you checked for all ISPs in your area?

Sadly, my town has signed an exclusive contract with comcast, so we're locked into a single provider, other then 5G

I made some improvements, I think something may be wrong with the coax cable that was coming up from the cellar, because moving my cable modem and wireless router to the first floor largely restore the performance to closer what I'm paying for. So I was getting 90Mbs, sometimes a bit more during the day as mentioned in my OP, now I'm getting a solid 900Mps. Upstairs with the mesh satellite is sitting between 250 and 500, and I'm pretty happy with that.

 

[eyoungren]

interesting, I wasn't really aware of that service and though it might be cellular (I do have TMobile cell service)
So I checked it out it asked for my address and came back "not available in your area yet".
That makes me wonder whether it is really cellular?
I do get "5GUC" service at home and my download speed is typically 500-600Mbps and upload 10-20, 13PM. That's as good as my phone can do pretty much.

@maflynn at least in the last 2 locations I lived in CA we had more than 1 ISP option, eg right now I have Frontier FIOS but I could also have Spectrum - have you checked for all ISPs in your area?

It is cellular. But, as it's the excess capacity they are selling, they may not have enough to support the service in your area.

 

[maflynn]

Here's my results,

So as I mentioned I think overall something was wrong with having the router/wifi upstairs. I think either interference with the wifi by some electronic device (tv), or more likely I think the coax cable that is buried in the wall.

I still see some degradation, during the day, but I think that's just network traffic with other people doing stuff

As for T-Mobile, the price s tempting and I had assumed they have tech support to actually talk too, unlike comcast.

 

[mathiasinthe314]

Any one using T-Mobile home internet here?

Thoughts on them, both from a customer service perspective and quality of product?

I'm seriously thinking of cancelling my comcast internet and getting this.

I've been having problems with comcast these past few months. I was paying/getting about 900Mbs but then it dropped down to 550Mbs. Lately I'm seeing 250Mbs, maybe 300Mbs in early mornings/evenings, during the day that speed drops to about 90Mbs (and even slower) and that's painful.

I think its my neighbor (or even neighbors), he revamped his home network with separate lines for video cameras and home internet. Since then my broadband has plummeted. His kids play a lot of games online (4 boys each with their own pc/console), and I suspect that may also be a cause, i.e., summer vacation.

Anyways, I need something a bit more consistent and wanted to hear some feedback from any T-Mobile home internet customers. I have an older Orbi mesh network (RBR50), how does the 5G gateway/Mesh extender compare to that? Any suggestions or complaints or gotchas I need to worry about

I had it for over a year as our home internet. It was good for most things in our household. We had 4 of us in the home. We all had iPhones and tablets, three tvs/Apple TVs, and one of us worked from home 1-2x per week and I worked from home on bad weather days (just a few times per winter). Most days it was more than sufficent for the browsing, surfing, messaging, and streaming we did. None of us were downloading big files regularly or gaming. You could feel the bottleneck when we had a house full of guests connected or on winter days when two adults were working from home and the kid was doing online learning or streaming.

Average speeds were 300 mbps down and about 25 mbps up. Sometimes slower, sometimes a little faster. Depended heavily on time of day and day of the week. As another poster mentioned, it is all capacity and priority based. I will say that when I had Mint Mobile (T-Mobile MVNO) my speeds were faster on my home internet than on my iPhone. Whereas when I had T-Mobile post paid, my iPhone was noticeably faster than the internet. So while priority is a factor, I am not sure that it is below MVNO's.

It really comes down to what you need it to do. If you have a lot of people connected, especially on data intensive activities like WFH, probably not the best solution (It's why I switched to 1 Gig Fiber when two of us started WFH full time). But if it's a couple of people and casual use, it's a great solution.

 

[mathiasinthe314]

Additionally, I will say that gateway placement can be a pain if your nearest tower isn't facing a conveniently located place and window.

The gateway doesn't play nice with external mesh systems. If you want mesh, you'll have to pay more and settle for their mesh system.

 

[MacCheetah3]

I haven’t used T-Mobile’s 5G Home Internet but had Verizon’s 5G Home Internet service for five years or so. Surprisingly, it was one of the most reliable, overall and speed, ISP options I’ve used. Truly astonishing, the price stayed consistent — actually, a few months, it was down by a couple of pennies. Solidly $50/month throughout. I was damn sure after the “2-year price guarantee” they’d slap at least another $10 on every year.

I switched to Spectrum because of a promo they had. I certainly don’t need the faster Internet, however, it is nice at times. Thus far, very surprisingly, I haven’t had a recollect-able outage.

Also in that time, I did consider T-Mobile’s 5G Home service because:

• $15 discount ($50 -> $35) for being a Mint Mobile customer, now that Mint is owned by T-Mobile.
• My Mint service coverage and speed is decent to good in the area, therefore, I expect the 5G Home service would be fine.
• Seemingly, has the similar 300Mbps / 20 Mbps expected speeds as VZ 5G Home

• Typical Download Speed: 133 – 415 Mbps (5G)
• Typical Upload Speed: 12 – 55 Mbps (5G)
• Typical Latency: 16 – 28 ms

I think @eyoungren may be struggling to shake a bad experience somewhere.

4. Just as with a cellphone, if you depend on uptime, consistency, stability and speed for your home internet then you take your chances. Some have had reliable TMHI for quite some time, then one day it just stopped working as well - because the cell tower got congested. Some have reported that speeds conk out at roughly the same time every day. Again, because of congestion.

TMHI is inexpensive, but it's really just an alternative for rural areas and for people who don't work from home or have their livelihood depend on their internet. The reality is that this is just cellular signal, the same signal your phone gets. So, it's subject to the same issues your cellphone may or may not have with signal.

Some people haven't experienced at all a single problem I have just mentioned. So, it just depends.

Indeed, YMMV.

TMHI is inexpensive, but [...]

A reasonable point, however, it can also be seen as a sanity check. For me, Cox was far the worst ISP. They made substantial price hikes per year and very low reliability, namely lots of (extended) outages. In second, for me, CenturyLink wasn’t far behind in the same behavior — the last I used them, that is.

3. Latency for online gaming is high. You can work around this and #2 by using a VPN however.

Regarding gaming… In my observations/experience, most problems stemmed from the Game Pass network more than my ISP. Some were just a router reboot — as annoying as that simple fix can be.

As an aside, in the past several years, across a few different ISPs, and various network hardware, “Open” NAT status appears to be completely elusive. I have no idea what ISPs are doing (lately), but it’s annoyingly baffling. No matter what I’ve tried, “Moderate” has now been the best I can create.

How to Fix Strict NAT Type on Xbox One X - Xbox One Guide - IGN

This page contains explanations for the various NAT types, as well as how to determine and adjust your NAT type to address issues with your Xbox One, Xbox One

www.ign.com

 

[eyoungren]

I think @eyoungren may be struggling to shake a bad experience somewhere.

Not me. I've never had nor used TMHI. I just bullet-pointed out what's been mentioned on the T-Mobile subreddit. T-Mobile is just my cellphone carrier.

I have Cox as my ISP, and I've had them since 2004. I don't have any real complaints about Cox or the service. Every so often when my current price is about to 'expire' I call Cox up and ask them if they have any deals I can take advantage of to either keep my price the same or lower it. I've never had that fail. A couple weeks ago, I even lowered the bill by $10 more a month just because I happened to check plans online.

 

[MacCheetah3]

I don't have any real complaints about Cox or the service.

It was when I lived in the PHX metro from 2010 to 2018. And I did look at outage maps, both official and their-party crowdsourced, as well as nearby social media posts to confirm the outages.

Not me. I've never had nor used TMHI. I just bullet-pointed out what's been mentioned on the T-Mobile subreddit. T-Mobile is just my cellphone carrier.

Ah. I thought perhaps you had a bad 5G service experience and had an axe to grind.

By the way, Verizon’s 5G Home wasn’t my first experience with fixed wireless Internet. I used Clearwire (stylized Clearw’re) back in the day — in part because I had a business that was an affiliate (i.e., Authorized Reseller).

 

[maflynn]

Average speeds were 300 mbps down and about 25 mbps up.

I'm paying comcast about 120 bucks give or take for about 900 Mbps, they may have upped or changed the tier I'm on but that's the speed I initially signed up for. I was largely getting 250Mbps, so why pay 120 when I can pay 60 (plus fees/taxes)? That was my motivation, I might as well save 60 bucks a month if I'm only seeing 250Mbps.

All is good, though getting rid of comcast is always on my mind, but at the moment, thanks to my town's horrible decision for an exclusive contract, they're the only broadband option for us - other then VZW/T-Mobile 5G home internet.