So apparently I cannot connect to sites that need to verify your location because my new tmobile internet service shows me as being located in a State that is different from my actual location.
Been on hold for 50 mins to speak to someone, not sure if I will get anyone tonight and this is not looking good for customer service support that you don’t have a different number specifically for tech issues like this.
Same deal for us in Colorado, except I don’t think it’s an IP number translation issue since my location will alternate between Aurora, CO (not bad, about 30 miles away) and Memphis, TN (not even the same time zone!) If I go to a geolocation site like https://www.where-am-i.co/ it will switch back and forth constantly - mostly the Memphis address, but then every so often it will come up as Aurora.
When it’s wrong it breaks lots of things - streaming content, google maps, local weather reports, my Windows 10 current time, the default timezone for calendaring, and on and on.
I spent a bunch of time with “my personal tech support” on T-Mobile - I spoke with 2 techs who were friendly enough, but of no help at all. The second one decided it must be a problem with my computer instead of their gateway and transferred my call to Dell’s tech support line even after I told him it’s also a problem on my HP computer and phone!
It seemed like the problem wasn’t addressed in their troubleshooting script anywhere so they just punted - I didn’t bother to call back and go through that whole thing again.
We have the Nokia 5G21 Gateway, but I heard from a human T-Mobile employee at one of their retail stores that there is a “new” fancier 5G gateway available now - does anyone have this new hardware, but continue to have geolocation problems?
I’m tempted to call and demand the newer gateway.
We have the Nokia 5G21 Gateway, but I heard from a human T-Mobile employee at one of their retail stores that there is a “new” fancier 5G gateway available now - does anyone have this new hardware, but continue to have geolocation problems?
A new gateway won’t help since any gateway or cellphone will connect to the same DHCP service that provides the dynamic IP addresses and those addresses have to come from a pool - keep in mind IP v4 has limited IPs available for the world to use so that’s why they are dynamic and not permanently assigned to you.
I live near KC MO and I too get bopped around from a Denver IP and a Memphis IP - I’ve never got a location with 400mi!. This is not a problem unique to T-mobile. Verizon generally has me out of Chicago - just looked in the logs and my Verizon cell card in my laptop had me in Lakewood, CO, Gardner, KS, Berryton, KS, Scranton, KS, and Indianapolis, IN in just the last 24hrs!. I see others on ATT in my logs bopping around Chicago and Kansas City and Houston. My Centurylink DSL line has me out of the other side of the state. Basically, using IP addresses for geo-location has never been a good idea and website and content providers should stop relying on it as being accurate.
Knowing what I know...I still came here hoping to find a solution because I too am frustrated by this. Here’s what one of the GEO IP location database services has to say about this topic. Keep in mind the websites you are visiting have to use one of these database services to get the location information. They don’t get it directly from your ISP (e.g. t-mobile, ATT, Verizon, etc)
“With those limitations in mind, we estimate that our GeoIP2 products can identify users at the country level with 99.8% accuracy. For IPs located within the U.S., we estimate around an 80% accuracy at the state/region level, and a 66% accuracy for cities (within a 50km radius of that city).”
Geolocation Accuracy – MaxMind
At least I get located in the right country every time :(
I agree this is a major issue. Being disabled and home watching TV a lot, I cannot get the local information from the Smart TV channels, having streaming services repotting that my location seems wrong. I am trying to get my TV to use my location from my account, but it seems that I don’t have a way to do that.
I believe that we need to start contacting the BBB, FCC/FTC plus your local Agricultural, Trade and Consumer Protection, Public Service Commission and Department of Justice. Since my area has junk cable (down 30% or more) I don’t have much other choice for ISP in my building.
The reasons phones are not having the same issues is GPS built in. I wish somehow the gateway itself would have a way to provide the location via the SIM.
I agree this is a major issue. Being disabled and home watching TV a lot, I cannot get the local information from the Smart TV channels, having streaming services repotting that my location seems wrong. I am trying to get my TV to use my location from my account, but it seems that I don’t have a way to do that.
I believe that we need to start contacting the BBB, FCC/FTC plus your local Agricultural, Trade and Consumer Protection, Public Service Commission and Department of Justice. Since my area has junk cable (down 30% or more) I don’t have much other choice for ISP in my building.
The reasons phones are not having the same issues is GPS built in. I wish somehow the gateway itself would have a way to provide the location via the SIM.
The root cause for live TV streaming goes to the television rights that were never designed for the internet. We all know there are local restrictions and blackout rules especially for news and sports. Local advertising counts on selectively broadcasting to only their respective local areas. When these policies were created it was easy to enforce because you literally had to be in the same zip code as the TV transmission towers or the access was controlled by the cable set top boxes. Well actually, the cable companies just installed band filters on your cable feed to block certain channels and you could simply remove those if you knew how, but I digress…..
Fast forward to now, the folks who own these local restriction polices are still trying to control who gets to watch what. It’s not good enough for you to just type in your zip code. No, they have to use IP geolocation or GPS because they think we are all liars.
So what’s the happy medium where we attest that we are in a given local area and satisfy the regulators that we are physically located where we claim to be?
The reasons phones are not having the same issues is GPS built in. I wish somehow the gateway itself would have a way to provide the location via the SIM.
Enabling GPS on your home ISP and providing that to any website or web service that requested it would be dangerous. Imagine if this website just posted your physical location for anyone to see. I strongly oppose this idea.
Yes, phones do have the same issue when they rely on IP based location. So, people that do not want to share GPS information still have this same IP location problem. As the poster above pointed out, the complaints really need to be placed on the web site and TV service providers.
I'm into my third month of T-Mobile 5G Home Internet. My real world location is Lebanon, Missouri (Missouri Ozarks Salem Plateau). My IP location switches from Chicago, IL, Denver, CO and Independence, MO. It appears my IP address changes/renews every 12 hours. This wrecks havoc on streaming services and secure login sites, like my bank, Walmart, Lowe's, etcetera. Trusted device keeps changing with the IP address. Didn't bother me untill I attempted to access our Secretary of State's website in regards to the midterm elections. I was denied access for being out of state. Yeppers, not a happy camper anymore!
So apparently I cannot connect to sites that need to verify your location because my new tmobile internet service shows me as being located in a State that is different from my actual location.
Been on hold for 50 mins to speak to someone, not sure if I will get anyone tonight and this is not looking good for customer service support that you don’t have a different number specifically for tech issues like this.
Im not sure the solution to my issue will help yells but it worked for me. When I switched to t-mobile I could no longer play my lotto numbers because you have to be located in state to purchase online and it NEVER had me located in state. One day i tried opening the maps app, turning on location, and then actually selecting the button to find my location. Then went back to my lotto app and it's allowed it everything since then....I always made sure to turn on location before but now also open the maps app and hit the my location button and hey presto....Yay!! Although it will probably never work again now that I've shared technology advice. ..good luck
I'm into my third month of T-Mobile 5G Home Internet. My real world location is Lebanon, Missouri (Missouri Ozarks Salem Plateau). My IP location switches from Chicago, IL, Denver, CO and Independence, MO. It appears my IP address changes/renews every 12 hours. This wrecks havoc on streaming services and secure login sites, like my bank, Walmart, Lowe's, etcetera. Trusted device keeps changing with the IP address. Didn't bother me untill I attempted to access our Secretary of State's website in regards to the midterm elections. I was denied access for being out of state. Yeppers, not a happy camper anymore!
sigh, the problem is IPv4 location data and it’s not a problem specific to T-Mobile. It drives me crazy too and it happens with every major national ISP - Verizon, CenturyLink, ATT, etc…
The fact is IPv4 is a limited resource and not everyone can have a dedicated IP address assigned to them. That means the ISP’s have to pull from a pool and that pool has to remain dynamic because people are dynamic. The real problem is with the website owners that attempt to rely on known flawed IP location database sources. Contact the website and ask them to stop using IP addresses for location information.
Same deal for us in Colorado, except I don’t think it’s an IP number translation issue since my location will alternate between Aurora, CO (not bad, about 30 miles away) and Memphis, TN (not even the same time zone!) If I go to a geolocation site like https://www.where-am-i.co/ it will switch back and forth constantly - mostly the Memphis address, but then every so often it will come up as Aurora.
When it’s wrong it breaks lots of things - streaming content, google maps, local weather reports, my Windows 10 current time, the default timezone for calendaring, and on and on.
I spent a bunch of time with “my personal tech support” on T-Mobile - I spoke with 2 techs who were friendly enough, but of no help at all. The second one decided it must be a problem with my computer instead of their gateway and transferred my call to Dell’s tech support line even after I told him it’s also a problem on my HP computer and phone!
It seemed like the problem wasn’t addressed in their troubleshooting script anywhere so they just punted - I didn’t bother to call back and go through that whole thing again.
We have the Nokia 5G21 Gateway, but I heard from a human T-Mobile employee at one of their retail stores that there is a “new” fancier 5G gateway available now - does anyone have this new hardware, but continue to have geolocation problems?
I’m tempted to call and demand the newer gateway.
How did that work for you? I am having constant problems now. Drops in service, no service for hours, wildly fluctuating speeds. As of the last two weeks I am either out of service completely, then rebooting for the 1000th time. Then I have great download, but ZERO upload. This a new one. The rapidly changing ip addresses have become a huge problem, too. I have been on the phone with Hulu every few hours to reset my zip & new IP addresses, today, eleven times. It’s doing the error message right now. I have not had this problem at this intensity, EVER. This is a TM problem, period. As you said, this disrupts log ins on websites, and countless other problems. All of these problems are all over these forums, and it appears that NOBODY has found a fix that lasts. Other than dumping TM, which is where I will probably end up doing myself. They were woefully under equipped to handle this customer load, and most of the tech people follow a flowchart for responses, that all end up with short term fixes. I have had issues escalated a number of times, and never got a callback from anyone. This is not a smart, nor profitable way to run a business. Apparently, they don’t care. At least I live in an area with more choices. Dumped Centurylink over a year ago because they could not sustain the speeds necessary to handle streaming tv services after I dumped both Dish & Directv. I’m going to try out the Xfinity internet option next.
So apparently I cannot connect to sites that need to verify your location because my new tmobile internet service shows me as being located in a State that is different from my actual location.
Been on hold for 50 mins to speak to someone, not sure if I will get anyone tonight and this is not looking good for customer service support that you don’t have a different number specifically for tech issues like this.
Im not sure the solution to my issue will help yells but it worked for me. When I switched to t-mobile I could no longer play my lotto numbers because you have to be located in state to purchase online and it NEVER had me located in state. One day i tried opening the maps app, turning on location, and then actually selecting the button to find my location. Then went back to my lotto app and it's allowed it everything since then....I always made sure to turn on location before but now also open the maps app and hit the my location button and hey presto....Yay!! Although it will probably never work again now that I've shared technology advice. ..good luck
I had problems with my state’s lottery website, too. I did all the location settings I could do on my desktop, and it still did not work with the Chrome browser. I have no problem ever with the Firefox one, however, so just use that browser to play the lottery online. I also have no problem using the lottery app on my cell phone, which has T-Mobile.
Home location Omaha NE
Current location according to any speedtest, weather apps,tv,youtube locations… Denver, CO
The download ping for most speed tests is above 300ms
why cant tmobile use my billing and home address data to allow me to access better servers.
I cant recommend tmobile home internet for gaming use as my connection to servers is never good.
I went from 40mbps down / 1mbps up CenturyLink with 25/35ms gaming ping
to
303mbps down and 87mbps up tmobile with 100-150ms gaming ping
both at 50$ a month
I use fuboTV and using T-mobile home internet they will not provide you a local IP address, so a service like fubo will check your public IP to determine where you are, so I am getting local channels.
I contact the support they say that I need to speak with fubo, and that is not the case. fubo has an api to check what is your IP address that is api.fubo.tv/v3/location the same they use in their code to check your location and my IP returns not on my region,
But I am a point I can’t spectrum anymore, for local channel I am getting VHF/UHF/HD 4K antenna to at least get the local channels.
I would prefer that the support is more direct and honest and just say we don’t provide local IP addresses, but for the price of internet and fubo TV it is enough a good reason for me to drop the spectrum monopoly. I try so hard with spectrum to try to make the price of TV+internet the same as t-mobile plus fubo, but that was an even impossible task, I lost my hope and patience.
If wasn’t for the issue of local IP, I was going to be 100% satisfied with t-mobile hoem internet, but I hope they fix it at some point. On the mean time an antenna is coming my way.
Same here with fubo tv. I call T-Mobile they tell me it’s a fubo or ruko issue. The customer service rep I got told me they have no issues with this and have never got complaints. I told them we’ll check your website because there are many complaints. I hope they find a solution. I guess I need to get an antenna too. My husband almost lost it one Sunday when he couldn’t get the Steeler game. Thank goodness it was being streamed on Amazon or heck I was ready to pack my bags and move. Lol.
I got T-Mobile internet last year and since installing it, all my devices think I’m in Denver when I’m living just south of Kansas City. TV wants to default to Mountain Time, airlines think I’m leaving from DEN. It’s super annoying. Hey it’s cool that Sling wants to keep me up to date with Colorado political ads, but not very relevant.
Just used the link above (https://www.where-am-i.co/) and found the following...
IP location: State Capitol Building, 200 East Colfax Avenue, Denver, CO 80203, United States of America
Not even close...
Worse for me - my IP location is showing as either Bellevue, WA (not too much of a problem) or Puerto Rico (big problem). I am in Stamford CT! Work intranet locked me out as being “out of the country” and other sites that are US-specific are giving us difficulties. T-Mobile tech support no help. Argh!
I first noticed this problem (and it IS a problem!) when I ran a speed test and it was excessively slow. That’s when I noticed they were pinging a server in Denver, CO, when I am in Arkansas. I only recently switched to T-Mobile home internet. I wish they would address this.
Same issues as above. VPN’s can be tricky and troublesome, but for the 95% of the time it works for me I can live with that. T-Mobile Home Internet has had me show up in Puerto Rico, Costa Rica and even China. So, you can imagine what comes back on web pages I was using. I am north of San Diego. My solution was to fire up the VPN and set it to only use a Los Angeles based server for an IP address.
I am thinking about using one of my Asus routers and setting up the VPN on it, so all the stuff using the wi-fi will use that LA based VPN server for a WAN IP address, it would hand out the LAN IP’s. Speeds will slow down, higher latency and longer pings. Just not sure if the slower speeds are worth the trade off for sites and services not liking the VPN? Google results is one that gives a failed connection results when using my VPN. If I could count on T-Mobile for decent Home Internet, it would not be an issue to use a slower VPN through a router to handle DNS and obtaining local IP addresses. Without the L.A. VPN getting results in Spanish is a pain, my Spanish is very limited T-Mobile and images don’t translate!
STILL a HUGE issue in 2023. (Omaha, NE area as well and also get Denver CO for location)
T-Mobile gets away with border-skirmishes (it’s a thing with ISP’s and has been since the beginning) by showing service in another state that way companies that own rights to the “area” served by T-Mobile home internet cannot pursue legal action. This needs to stop. Either offer us service 100% in the area by GeoLocation you bill us for, or not at all!
It's very frustrating. Fortunately, YouTube TV gets our location correct so local channels are available. Paramount and Peacock use IP and consistently get it wrong. I notify them once a quarter that they need to improve their systems. For my money, T-Mobile is delivering an excellent product. I have consistent connection and reliable service.
Meanwhile, I wonder if there's a way to get some action out of Washington. Considering the lack of comprehension most in Congress have for 21st century technology, I am doubtful.
It,s ALL T MOBILE AND THEY DON,T Give A SH-T...
I wish I had found this thread before I ordered my modem from T-Mobile. Cancelled the service within 24 hours hours when I found out my geolocation is in Maryland and I’m located in Virginia. Couldn’t buy a lottery ticket online and won’t get my local channels through Youtube TV. I was really hoping to dump my cable company.
So apparently I cannot connect to sites that need to verify your location because my new tmobile internet service shows me as being located in a State that is different from my actual location.
Been on hold for 50 mins to speak to someone, not sure if I will get anyone tonight and this is not looking good for customer service support that you don’t have a different number specifically for tech issues like this.
This really jacks me up because Sling uses this information for sports. I get anything in Dallas Texas blacked out because it says I'm there and not in Oklahoma City. Right now it says I'm in Austin. I'm no where close. And the Tmobile rep told me they use dynamic ip addresses and they can't change the geo location. That's not gonna work.
Same deal for us in Colorado, except I don’t think it’s an IP number translation issue since my location will alternate between Aurora, CO (not bad, about 30 miles away) and Memphis, TN (not even the same time zone!) If I go to a geolocation site like https://www.where-am-i.co/ it will switch back and forth constantly - mostly the Memphis address, but then every so often it will come up as Aurora.
When it’s wrong it breaks lots of things - streaming content, google maps, local weather reports, my Windows 10 current time, the default timezone for calendaring, and on and on.
I spent a bunch of time with “my personal tech support” on T-Mobile - I spoke with 2 techs who were friendly enough, but of no help at all. The second one decided it must be a problem with my computer instead of their gateway and transferred my call to Dell’s tech support line even after I told him it’s also a problem on my HP computer and phone!
It seemed like the problem wasn’t addressed in their troubleshooting script anywhere so they just punted - I didn’t bother to call back and go through that whole thing again.
We have the Nokia 5G21 Gateway, but I heard from a human T-Mobile employee at one of their retail stores that there is a “new” fancier 5G gateway available now - does anyone have this new hardware, but continue to have geolocation problems?
I’m tempted to call and demand the newer gateway.
Yes I have the new Gateway, same issue. The issue is with what ip address it assigns a piece of equipment. If the ip address is registered to one that was/or is in a different place than it returns that place rather then query your location and return that, or the actual location of the tower. The actual location of the tower, I would be happy with.
Try this while hooked to your gateway.
https://whatismyipaddress.com/
T-Mobile really needs to find a solution to this. I will be changing internet providers because this is becoming more and more of an issue for me.
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