Hello, I am thinking of giving the 5G internet service a shot for the 15-day trial. We have a tower within a quarter-mile or so of us. But reading through the forum, I must admit I have some concerns regarding the stability of the service. At this point, I am prepared for failure, so I will be pleasantly surprised if the service is stable. I am just not sure how much confidence I can put in a 15-day trial. While I am reasonably technical and expect an issue now and then, I am not willing or interested in spending hours and hours on the phone dealing with someone who is parroting back a script or who can barely communicate. Also, a situation where we are trying to resolve some ongoing arcane technical issues that leave us dead in the water for hours daily is a no-go. We are not gamers or have 9000 devices to connect to. But we do work from home and don’t have the luxury of blowing off our responsibilities due to ongoing “technical difficulties.” My plan is to try it for the 15 days. If all is good, I would probably keep my broadband for an extra month before cutting the cord. I like the idea of a low fixed price and no contract, and I can live with some intermittent slow-downs. So what say you? Is our situation one that would be a reasonable fit for the service? Thank you!
I would stay clear of T-Mobile for now. They throttle our usage down to slower than an old dial up accounts every afternoon. I am paying $200 a month for crap cell service, horrible data and the worlds worst Internet. I used the word “damn” in a chat, so they turned off my ability to chat with them over their crappy service. Said I was “inappropriate”. What’s inappropriate is paying $200 a month for nothing!! The Filipino based CSR’s only make a bad situation worse and make you mad as hell.
+7
I think it would fit you just fine. I am not a gamer, and we had Xfinity before we switched to TMHI. I'm two months into my using it, and I have no problems whatsoever. While I wish I could connect at 5G speeds, I can only get a strong signal for 4G LTE. That gives me anywhere between a low of 40 Mbps to a high of 70 Mbps.
I can stream two TVs simultaneously with no latency. I normally have three computers fired up along with two iPads and iPhones and a dozen other gizmos for security and Amazon Alexa. I do FaceTime videos from Florida with my family in Sydney, and regularly use Zoom for meetings.
I'll readily admit that my system isn't as snappy as it was with Xfinity and 800 Mbps download speeds, but surprisingly, I see very little difference between the two services other than T-Mobile seems to have far fewer outages than Xfinity. The only modification to the system I've made is to change DNS to OpenDNS. There is a lot of buzz that T-Mobile’s DNS servers are a bit overloaded, and with OpenDNS (the free version) I see no latency whatsoever on web requests
To prepare you for what you'll find when you get your gateway, you cannot control DHCP, NAT, parental controls or something simple like a static IP. Having said all that, my gateway (Arcadyan KVD21 5G) has excellent WiFi coverage. It's every bit as good as the TP-Link AX50 I was using with Xfinity. I'm not a gamer and we are empty nesters, so NAT and parental controls are unimportant to us. I do wish there was a bit more control over DHCP and static addressing, but it's easy to work around these issues.
My setup was quick and straight-forward, which is what I think T-Mobile is trying for. This type of ISP is called Fixed Wire Internet (FWI) and is relatively new among ways of providing Internet service. T-Mobile is looking to jump-start their business in FWI distribution, so they are offering low prices and free hardware.
Good luck with your 15-day trial. I'd be very interested to hear what you choose after a month of usage.
I signed up for TMO Home Internet less than a month ago. For the first week of service I kept my DSL service with CCI. I live in a rural area and CCI’s fastest plan was 25 up and 2 down. With TMO Home Internet I’m getting about 50 up and 25 down. No interruptions of service so far. So, after a week I cancelled my DSL service. I have about 20 device connected. I stream videos with Prime Video, Hulu, and Sling. We use Zoom, Google Meets, and other similar platforms a lot. So far, no issues.
+8
I am similar to you TrialAddict,
I am about 3/4-1 mile from our tower with n41 5G speed (preferred). Like Xfinity (my old service and way too expensive) the speeds depend on the time of day and number of users. Right now in the middle of a Saturday afternoon, I get about 75 Mbs down/23 Mbs up. In the evenings and mornings it is closer to > 100 Mbs.
If you can point it (rotate the unit if necessary) towards the tower, and tune it in with the T-Mobile Internet app, then you should be fine. And the price is much less expensive than Xfinity.
Best of luck!
With TMO Home Internet I’m getting about 50 up and 25 down.
Make that about 50 down and 25 up.
Its not really a trial. It is a guarantee that if you cancel within 14 days they will refund you your money. If you don't end up canceling, then you paid for those first 2 weeks as a partial amount of you monthly fee of $50 or $30 depending on your rate .
+8
Yep, I did the same thing. During the 15-day trial I tuned it in and made sure we were happy, then disconnected Xfinity. Generally, I am on my Mac streaming Golf Channel, my wife is downstairs streaming movies, and the grandkids come over and play Minecraft and Fortnight, all with no hiccups.
The only issues I have had if using Arkadyan Gateway
1) Firmware 1.00.18 has toasted two of my units . After update 5G access is gone & only can connect to B12 dropped down from b66
2) Roku dual band devices can not connect to 5ghz band. Will never see the SSID. According to Roku support, the 5ghz needs to broadcast on channel 10 which we can not modify ourselves, so Arkadyan would need to fix in a firmware update, but that most likely will never happen.
3)Make sure you separate band 2.4ghz & 5ghz and make sure to set to WPA 2 ONLY if you have smart devices from FEIT or they will continously go offline
I’m about ½ mile from the tower, and my internet has been solid. Got rid of Comcast, I and have no regrets.
+1
Thank you all for the replies. Very interesting. It seems that the stability of the service is all over the place, from undependable/unusable to blazing fast and rock solid. I think the only way to get a better handle on it is to try it out for myself in our location. I will wait for about a month to place my order as we will be in and out of town a good bit and don’t want to waste most of the 15-day trial when I’m not at home. However I will keep an eye on this and other forums. I realize that 5G home internet is far from a mature product and kinks need to be worked out and more tower capacity increased. It’s amazing to me that companies have rolled out the 5G home internet as quickly as they have -- perhaps in some cases it was rushed too much.
I have been a customer for 11 months and have the have the KVD21 unit. It’s been 95% fine. There’s 21 devices connected. Running a 4K TV and my computer is no problem. I back feed my whole house Ethernet into the T Mobile unit. I run my main TV and my main computer thru the Ethernet and everything else by the dual WiFi of the unit. Download at evening prime is 40-70, and the balance is 70-150. It’s the same whether 3 bars or 4 bars of signal strength. 10% of the time it’s 5 bar. Combined with a TV streaming service I saved over $100 per month. My optic cable was only giving me 45 for download.
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