Question

Not routing on band n41

  • 5 October 2022
  • 7 replies
  • 548 views
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About a month ago, my HINT stopped passing internet traffic.  I checked the status and found that I was now connected on band n41 (always n71 before).  I assumed they had upgraded my tower and contacted T-Mobile via Facebook.  They confirmed the tower was having maintenance but that “parts were missing.”  Three weeks later, they said the maintenance was complete.  Still no HINT for me.  They told me it could take another 10 days for it to start working.  Apparently magic was supposed to happen.

My Nokia hotspot is still locked on band n41.  Signal strength is usually better than -90 but sometimes goes to nothing.  When doing a trace route, I get one hop beyond the hotspot, so I’m hitting the tower, and nothing more.  I’ve tried to explain to T-mobile that there seems to be a routing issue with band n41 not getting routed but they have no understanding of the issue.  My cell phone doesn’t connect to band n41 and has no internet issues.

There’s not much left for me to do besides cancel as I’ve had no service for a month and T-mobile is content to do nothing.  I asked for them to escalate the problem or open a new ticket with excuses that equated to “no”.  I thought I’d check here for any ideas.  

7 replies

iTinkeralot
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If you get the cellular metrics from the gateway having the PCI of the cell and reporting what your gateway reports about the cellular connection might help. It sounds like they did an n71 to n41 upgrade in the area and the cell is not routing as you suspect. If you have a 5G phone on T-Mobile maybe you can get a connection to that cell and get more information about the cellular metrics. If you don’t know the exact tower with the cell maybe you can find it via CellMapper.net. T-Mobile engineers should be able to determine that is going on with that tower and the cell distribution. 

I suppose if this has been going on for a month maybe it is time to cut and run. Maybe push to talk with a customer satisfaction representative and get them to actually escalate the case. It sounds very frustrating. I wish you the best in getting them to resolve it. 

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Thanks for your reply iTinkeralot.  In my case, it’s pretty straightforward.  I live in the mountains and have line of sight to a single T-mobile tower.  It’s 10 miles away, but there are no obstructions; I can see the entire tower (with binoculars).  I’m not within range of any other towers.  How do I reach a “customer satisfaction representative”?

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As another data point, even though my cell phone supports 5G n41, it will not lock onto that band.  I’ve tried driving around the tower and it won’t use it.  Makes me suspect that the phone detects no internet connection and chooses another band.

iTinkeralot
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I went through a chat via the marketing web page once. It was a live chat not the bot but it began with the web bot. Maybe with a call and request to talk to a customer service representative. What worked last summer might not work as well or the same. 
if you are 10 miles away the n41 probably will not reach that far. Everything I researched suggest not. I had the n71 from the tower 5.3 miles due north of us and recently the 5G changed to n41. I now have a lower power received but the signal quality is improved and also less noise. Performance is better and speed can be 2x what we had. Like you I can see the full tower as we live on a ridge of the Smokey Mountains. So no obstructions does help. 

iTinkeralot
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If you go to the bottom of this page and under the “Support” menu select “Contact us” of course you see all the contact numbers etc… but at the bottom right of the page a chat window is there. You can get a live chat with a customer representative there and give that path a try. I did have success with that last summer as I was handed to another customer representative that was quite helpful. Maybe that will help. 

If the tower is 10 miles out, with a clear line of sight, 4G LTE should have no major issue with the reach assuming the power level of the signal is higher. The n71 with sufficient or higher power can provide coverage over a longer distance but it depends in part on the power level of the signal. When we were receiving the n71 from the tower 5.3 miles out we got fair speeds but it never pushed the max capability of the frequency. The n41 mid band millimeter frequency is commonly useful for a radius of a few miles. With any frequency the farther you are from the source the speed and performance tends to be reduced. Longer frequencies travel farther than shorter ones and get better penetration. I think it would be a bit of a stretch to expect a reasonable n41 signal 10 miles out. Maybe with a 4X4 MIMO external antenna but still need the signal to have sufficient strength to be able to improve it enough to be useful.

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I was aware that n41 might be a problem when enabled, but I don’t think that distance is the issue but rather a network problem.  Signal strength is reasonably good.  My cell phone can see band 41 when driving around the tower and won’t use that channel (shows as neighbor channel in Network Cell Info app).  Most people seem to have the problem of their hotspot locking onto band n71 and they have trouble getting it to use n41.  I was perfectly happy with my service on band 71 for 10 months, getting better than 75 Mbps, sometimes up to 125.

C

were you ever able to resolve this? our device keeps locking on to n41 and we have NO INTERNET. when on n71, i have 125/20. i work from home and the internet is unusable 99% of the time, now. we are resorting to hotspots on our tmo phones.

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