For reference I live in an apartment building which has acceptable T-Mobile service as I've gone years without any issues living here. A new neighbor has moved in recently, and I noticed that I have been experiencing worse call quality and more calls have been dropping. Our building has a very spotty internet provider with high ping and slow upload speeds. A few things lead me to believe that my new neighbors have installed a T-Mobile 4G LTE Cellspot. I'm familiar with the Cellspot because my parents live in a rural area and have one in their home. In the past my phone used to display 5G service regularly, now instead it displays LTE exclusively. When stepping outside about twenty yards away from the building my 5G service returns. I also receive better speeds when running a speed test outside away from my building. Inside of my building I barely reach 40 mbs down and usually below 5 mbs upload speed which is important for calls and video calls. Speed and the quality of calls has never been an issue before. But only recently because of this I’m needing to leave my home to make calls. It's frustrating because like I said this is a recent issue and I can pin it to something that's making it worse. I use my T-Mobile service to get away from my terrible internet to begin with. I understand that there is no way to connect to the tower directly because the Cellspot is basically a small tower itself and the phone connects there by default. What are my options?
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CellSpot can interfere with coverage. If they have a CellSpot that uses the internet to provide service instead of the repeater/amplifier version. Then it uses the internet connection to provide a band 4 signal. If you are close to it, your device will probably connect to the stronger signal. If their internet gets bogged down, the CellSpot will drop calls.
I’ve seen these in some places (commercial store) before. Range is typically quite short ~100’ maybe.
Depending on the device you have, you may be able to ‘disable LTE’, and pick up only 5G from T-Mobile towers, or similarly some devices allow you to disable a band (B4/B66 in this case).
Of course, that’s not a great solution, and you can contact T-Mobile and file a complaint for ‘slow internet’ and point out that a neighbor is using a cellspot to a poor internet service. The ‘can’ push a block to one of these cell spots, and ensure that you’re not connecting to it .. but will they ? Similarly, if its B4/B66, and your phone uses it … you’ll have weaker service in general.
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When we had a CellSpot because our old apartment was in an area that was just outside of the range of 3 towers. Our CellSpot was possible to pick up in the parking lot as well as in 18 units between 3 floors. This was with a massive WiFi congestion as well.
Thank you for the detailed answers. So from what was said, I think this is exactly the issue.
Someone close to me in my apartment building is using a 4G LTE Cellspot device to broadcast a T-mobile signal using their own home internet. And because I know that internet service is already spotty and unreliable with high ping and slow speeds in my building. My phone is connecting to this device because its only looking for the strongest signal. And is degrading my service and affecting my call quality.
My options to fix this are to enable “only 5G” which unfortunately Iphones do not support. (They allow the option to use 5G more when its the strongest signal available.) Or contact T-mobile, which I know I’m most likely to just get a run around trying things from someone just trying to do their job and get to the next conversation the quickest and it won’t work or change anything in the end. The only thing that I see working is T-mobile sends a request to the Cellspot device owner to stop using the device or send it back in. Which I doubt would happen.
Currently I will continue to leave my home to make calls to make sure they don’t drop or have quality issues. And will look into switching services to a carrier that does not use the T-mobile service.
Something unfortunate about this is other T-mobile users in my building notice that they have a strong signal and just think the service is slow. When in reality T-mobile is not the direct cause for this service degradation.
I really wish T-mobile had the option to only allow users with the Cellspots devices account connect to it. Or only allow the use of a Cellspot device when they know another T-mobile customers address is a far distance apart. I cant see the Cellspot being supported for much longer. These devices only support 4G capabilities when 5G is now becoming the norm. And with wifi-calling on most smart phones this device just creates more problems than it solves.
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If your device supports WiFi Calling. Enabling that might help your call quality until.you are outside and far enough away from the CellSpot to be connected to an actual tower.
If your device supports WiFi Calling. Enabling that might help your call quality until.you are outside and far enough away from the CellSpot to be connected to an actual tower.
Unfortunately, I think LegacyUser’s issue IS with the ISP in the building, so WiFi wouldn’t be any better.
For $30, it’s worth a shot.
If your device supports WiFi Calling. Enabling that might help your call quality until.you are outside and far enough away from the CellSpot to be connected to an actual tower.
Unfortunately, I think LegacyUser’s issue IS with the ISP in the building, so WiFi wouldn’t be any better.
For $30, it’s worth a shot.
That eBay link describes that unit as using an Internet connection. Is there some device that doesn't use your Internet connection?
I can assure you, the Signal booster is NOT a Device that requires internet. I have deployed many of these units with good results. However, a note to this would be that if you put the receiver where it can pick up their Cell spot, it will just repeat it's signal, which defeats the purpose. It may not be possible to get it to connect to the tower.
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