Question

5G Ultra Capacity --- NOT!

  • 14 April 2024
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Looking at the coverage map, my home is in a supposedly “5g Ultra Capacity” area.  Yet, at my home, I only get one bar, most of the time and two bars sometimes, but rarely.  I only get 5mbps download and 0.2 mbps upload speeds.  What do I have to do to get better coverage?  Does T-Mobile ever erect new towers or troubleshoot reception issues in the field?  I’ve used my phone in some actual 5g Ultra Capacity areas and I got 568mbps download speeds which I thought was remarkable.  Will I ever get this at home?  I’d switch to home internet in a second if I could really get 568mbps downloads at home.  Obviously, the technology is capable of fantastic performance.


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Userlevel 7
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Good luck on getting ‘utlra capacity’ if you have “1 bar” of service.

You would have to contact T-Mobile to find out about getting better service.  TBH, T-Mobile’s coverage maps are more for their ‘sales’ team than for reality.  In many areas it may be somewhat accurate, however, at fringe areas of service (i.e. 5G UC → 5G/4GLTE) , its off by ~10-20% or at least 10dBm RSRP.

There are many areas that have ‘No Service’ at all that are listed as 4GLTE or 5G.  T-Mobile typically isn’t the most aggressive to fill in ‘weak’ or ‘No Service’ areas that they have marked as coverage.

That being said, they’ll typically tell you to use ‘WiFi’ (odd that they expect you to have WiFi service but not T-Mobile, when using cell service in most places shouldn’t need to be supplemented with WiFi).

In my area, T-Mobile has actually removed service, and replaced with AT&T roaming in an area where they never had roaming.  When contacting T-Mobile, their ‘advanced technical support’ team claims that T-Mobile decommissioned the site, and has ‘No plans to rebuild or replace’ on US-101.

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