Question

Sudden loss of signal after 3 years of flawless service.

M
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We were an early adopter to T-Mobile home internet. We have enjoyed flawless reception since 2019.

 

We upgraded to the cylindrical style gateway last year and I'm assuming the signal was coming in over the 5G Network.

 

Within the last three weeks, our internet connection has been intermittent. The signal to the gateway drops at least twice per hour, sometimes much more. I assumed that it could be a bad gateway or perhaps a bad sim card.

 

Because of intermittent signal, we chose to upgrade the gateway again to the latest unit, hoping that that would solve the problem, however the problem remains.

 

Being an amateur radio operator, I am familiar with the characteristics of how RF travels from transmitter to receiver. I have a couple of ideas of what could  be causing the problem.

 

Trying to get help from a customer service representative that is reading from a script and probably has little knowledge of the real problem is very frustrating.

 

 

I hope someone in the community or perhaps the T-Mobile technical department could reach out to me and help solve this problem.

 

4 replies

S
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I just posted my issues too. They are probably the same. Techsupport replaced my gateway with the latest  and greatest fully updated unit. NO CHANGE. I have spoken to, who I consider experts,  about this and their answer is the tower techs are subcontractors who don't have a clue.

M
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My T-Mobile home internet worked perfectly for about 3 years.

About a month ago our internet signal became intermittent and dropped out frequently. The new 5G gateway was replaced, however the problem still persisted, even with a new gateway. We had no trouble for the first 3 years with the old LTE gateway it worked perfectly.

 

The shorter the wavelength of a frequency the less likely it is to travel through items and the more likely it is to bounce off of items.

I believe this is the reason for my intermittent signal. The new 5G frequencies are shorter in wavelength than the LTE frequencies, thus making them unable to travel through the thick canopy of leaves on the trees, like the LTE frequencies did.

 

My conclusion of T-Mobile internet, and any of the wireless internet services, is that since there's no physical cable running to the house so they feel there's no need to have technicians in the field to come to your home and do actual RF measurements.

 

It's basically a self-serve operation with minimal customer support.

 

So if it works at your location, fantastic, however if you have any issues with the RF signal,  you're just out of luck.

 

I can say it was good while it lasted. But until they can canvas an area with enough towers to overcome signal degradation at 5G frequencies, it's a hit or miss service.

D

This is a service provider problem. T-Mobile should get the FULL service up and running 100%. Verizon, AT&T, Spectrum ALL have much STRONGER (over 100mbps upload vs. T-Mobile around 60mbps as I type right now)…. Why is T-Mobile Gateway providing such a poor signal when others are not?

S

Have had a 3 TMobile phones with unlimited data for 2 years. Data on all 3 phones was always nearly flawless at home, even with a max 2 bars!  Started to get a little spotty here the last couple of months, (today being October 24, 2022). About 9 days ago my data became nonexistent at my home, (nearly total for my phone service too). I called 4 days into it and they told me there was no tower down, then changed the tune and said they were working on a tower & to wait 3 days. However, between 10pm & midnight, the service picks up. I have a feeling they oversold bandwidth and are making excuses.  
someone suggested making a complaint with the FCC. I think I’ll give them a couple more days after my service period starts over and if it’s still slow, I will call again. If they don’t resolve it, I will make that complaint to the FCC.

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