Question

5G home internet keeps dropping

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G

I was having internet disconnects at least once a day. Purchased a WiFi reset device called Keep Connect. It pings Google I think on a regular basis and if it detects the internet is down it will power reset whatever is plugged into it. It will also email/text you every time it happens. For some strange reason I’ve only had it reset once in the last month since I installed it. Obviously its not a solution for the problem, but its a decent band aid. 

iTinkeralot
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I have neighbors here that were on CenturyLink and it was horrible, unreliable service. I recommended T-Mobile to my neighbor across the street and now they are happy campers. We had no other good option here but the T-Mobile home internet solution. Hughes Net was out of the question and StarLink is too expensive. Not sure StarLink is all that great in the area anyway. 

Good Luck! 

J

T-Mobile keeps records of calls and usually will provide a ticket number. If you made another call they could look up the information based upon your account information as they record pretty much everything. 

That is good you reached a personable support person that really wanted to help out. I had a similar experience so I know there are some good ones and some that are just clueless. If you have the Arcadyan router vs. the Nokia the configuration options are very limited in the Arcadyan so support needs to ramp up on their game to target what they say to each customer. 

The problem is what to do in the interim for internet service if you want to stay with T-Mobile and avoid any sort of contract that ties you up. Sort of between a rock and a hard spot.

Well, the tech support person said they’d personally call me back in May/June, so I can get their name then. If this works out, I will definitely take the time to make sure T Mobile knows who this person is. Anyway, I have the Arcadyan router. I couldn’t even get into the router to check the settings when I was on the phone with tech support, so I don’t know. I’m back to my old provider for the moment, but T Mobile just told me to hang on to the Arcadyan router without charge for a couple of months while they do tower upgrades. I’m fine with that. Right now my internet service with a different provider is absolutely terrible (16 Mbps download; <1 Mbps upload), so I don’t have a lot of options. According to my current provider, to get a line up to my house and take advantage of the blazing fast speeds, my portion of the cost would be around $5,000. Forget it. So, I was really banking on the T Mobile 5G home internet getting me up in the neighborhood of 40Mbps up and down. That would be totally fine for what I do. We stream a lot, though, so satellite is out. I guess I’ll just wait until summer and see if the tower upgrades solve our problems. 

iTinkeralot
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +8

T-Mobile keeps records of calls and usually will provide a ticket number. If you made another call they could look up the information based upon your account information as they record pretty much everything. 

That is good you reached a personable support person that really wanted to help out. I had a similar experience so I know there are some good ones and some that are just clueless. If you have the Arcadyan router vs. the Nokia the configuration options are very limited in the Arcadyan so support needs to ramp up on their game to target what they say to each customer. 

The problem is what to do in the interim for internet service if you want to stay with T-Mobile and avoid any sort of contract that ties you up. Sort of between a rock and a hard spot.

J

Could I make a recommendation to T Mobile as well? There are tons of videos on YouTube about how to take you 5G device apart and hot wire it with an external antenna. Why not just put an external antenna jack on the device and offer an external antenna package for additional cost to customers who have connection issues?

J

Well, I spent about 30 minutes on the phone last night with a very nice and seemingly honest tech person who basically told me that based on my location, the salesperson had no business selling me the 5G home internet service. I was getting two bars max, and speeds were all over the place--from around 40 Mbps all the way up to around 300 Mbps, but rarely. Very erratic. Then the whole connection would be lost after about an hour, and I’d have to unplug the device and plug it back in. Super frustrating. As it turns out, in my case the signal is just too weak, even though the tower is only about .7 miles away to the northwest and I am up on a hill. Pushing back a bit, I discovered from the tech person that upgrades are scheduled to come to the tower in my area in May/June. I’m guessing the salesperson figured I’d spend a few months trying to figure out the problem until the tower is upgraded; then everything would be okay. Anyway, I asked if I could get the 4G LTE device in the meantime, and she said they are no longer offering that. So, I asked if there was a way to adjust the settings of the device only to grab the 4G signal, and she said I could go to 192.168.12.1 and use the admin login credentials on the device tag and set it to 2.4 GHz and not 5 GHz. She did not seem sanguine that this would solve my problem, and I couldn’t even login to the device anyway, so I just gave up. They are temporarily suspending my account while I hang on to the device. The tech person said she would personally call me back when the tower is upgraded, and we can try again. We’ll see. I’d be gone and would never come back to T Mobile if it wasn’t for this nice, honest tech person. I wish I could remember her name. She needs a promotion.  

J

Is this happening to anyone with a strong signal, or is it just weak signal folks? 

E

I’m having a problem with T-Mobile 5g home internet that has not been resolved despite many calls in to the help line.  I’ve had T-Mobile 5g home internet for almost a month now, and the short version is that every so often the gateway drops the network.  When I say “drop the network,” I mean to say it throws everything off of the Wifi that it’s broadcasting, and anything plugged in via ethernet says “no network found.  (To elaborate this point, cell phones switch to cellular data because wifi is gone for them, and computers hardwired into the gateway think that they are no longer plugged into anything.)  Turning off the gateway and turning it back on resolves the issue, but doesn’t prevent it from happening again.  Whatever is happening doesn’t seem to affect our connection speed/strength when the gateway IS providing signal to devices in the home, but due to the nature of our work, we need a connection that won’t just disconnect randomly.  

 

To address this, T-mobile has so far run a bunch of tests on their end, and seem to have ruled out a tower issue (which makes sense, as the tower shouldn’t have anything to do with whether or not the devices on the gateway’s wifi or ethernet connection get thrown off of the network.)  They’ve sent me a replacement gateway, which is experiencing the exact same problem (3 times in the last 36 hours, in fact).   I’ve noticed that the device gets pretty warm, so I set up a computer case fan as a cooler to force air through the device, thinking that perhaps it’s an issue with the device overheating.  However, while the gateway is notably cooler than it was without the fan, it has not prevented the issue from persisting.  The last thing that I can think to do (and my most recent attempt at resolving this issue) is to plug a router into the gateway via ethernet, and allow the router to handle the wifi/connections w/ devices in the house, and to disable wifi from the gateway all together.  Maybe the gateway is simply too overburdened with connections and gets somehow overwhelmed and shuts down, and having the router handle the “heavy lifting” of taking care of all of the individual device connections will resolve it?  I don’t have a great deal of faith that this will fix the issue (as the gateway also kicks ethernet things off of the network when it experiences this problem), but I’m running out of options/ideas of what to do in order to just get a stable, constant internet service.   

 

Is anybody else having this issue, has anybody resolved this issue, or does anybody have any advice or feedback regarding how I might get this resolved so that I can get back to having stable internet?

My Q-Link ZTE 5G phone is worthless. It can neither make nor receive calls within my home because of metal siding and the settings show it is connected to my router but still cannot make or receive a call. Completely unreliable.

U
Userlevel 1

I was sent out the new black box . This has resolved my dropping issues. I was buffering for a while  losing 5g to 4g with it. I moved the box to a new location in my home. The new software show the signal from the tower with your gps location. I also gained a bar to good on connection with the new goods

 

also for anyone wanting a work around the keep connect box works great fro checking your connection then auto resetting your modem. You can find it on Amazon. I sent mine back hope i don’t need it again.

 

Knocking on wood….

P

Mine drops daily 1-5 times and has consistently done so for 2 months now. I am on my third gateway. T-Mobile support has not found anything that prevents it but restarting always solves it. 

R

I am having same issue critical “modem chip down”. It reboots itself every few minutes and lost internet connection. I’ve tried 3 different grey gateway and all doing the same. At this point, I  do not know what to do as they are not knowing how to solve this!

J

We had the same issues with our 5G gateway device. We had only 2 bars which was supposed to be enough for a signal, however, when we had a signal our service was extremely slow and it was constantly dropping completely. We contacted customer support, went through all the troubleshooting with engineering (checking the signal, switching towers, moving the device around, etc). Finally, requested T-Mobile reactivate our previous device (the 4G LTE small white box).  Solved the problem instantly, strong signal, good speed, no drops, no problem streaming. After reactivating and connecting the 4G LTE Gateway the tech essentially admitted that the new 5G service is essentially a work in progress and isn’t up and running smoothly.  He said they are working on it and would contact us to upgrade our hardware to 5G when it was functioning properly in our area. Hope this is helpful.

 

I have all the same problems. Internet disconnects all the time.

M

I feel like I’ve been victimized by a bait and switch. We installed the T-Mobile Internet Gateway device a couple months back and had amazing speeds. 150-200 mbps. In the last week, it’s like we’ve been throttled down to the reality of our new device. Anywhere between 0 and 50 mbps, if we are lucky. Several times no more than 5mbps. And nothing has changed in my configuration whatsoever. A couple other people mentioned things were great “initially” only to later sink down to something abysmal with no clear reason why and no solution. Sigh.

J
Userlevel 1
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I don’t know the answer to that. I spoke to probably 3-4 different technicians before we straightened it out. I was told at one point the new 5G gateway was essentially a dual antenna and could receive either a 4G LTE signal or 5G signal. I was also told the gateway looked for,  an attached to wherever it received the best signal. So you would assume if there wasn’t a good 5G signal it would grab a 4G signal.  In our case it didn’t work at all. It was my suggestion since we hadn’t returned the 4G LTE receiver to reactivate it and give it a try. The tech agreed and after we hooked it back up it worked fine so I stayed with the 4G LTE receiver and sent the 5G back. There seems to be 2 possibilities: 1) The new 5G gateways are not capable of receiving the 4G signal and 2) T-Mobile is putting the 5G gateways out in the market where towers are not yet broadcasting that signal. That’s the only explanation I can come up with for our experience.

B

So there’s no way to force the 5G Gateway to only connect to 4G?

J
Userlevel 1
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I spoke with a T-Mobile tech this afternoon and was able to switch back to our 4G LTE gateway. That solved the problem, our signal was restored without any problems.  Apparently T-Mobile is in the process of upgrading their towers so they are compatible with the new 5G gateways but they haven’t completed the process in all areas.  As it was explained to me the new 5G gateways are supposed to receive either the old 4G LTE signal or the newer 5G signal but for whatever reason our unit didn’t receive either very well.  

B

It appears there are many people who commiserate with your issue but nobody has a resolution.  Even T-Mobile has no resolution.  I’ve been a phone user for more than 5 years and have been very pleased with the service.  I finally made the decision to “cut the cord” and dropped my cable in favor of the new internet gateway.  We do not have 5G service in my area but I don’t blame that for the CONSTANT loss of signal.  I’ve had to reboot my gateway tower three times within the last 24 hours.  I’ve added “wifi extenders” throughout my house but I’m convinced the problem does not exist within the walls of my home.  I’m normally a patient person but they’re pressing the limits.  I would like to try Ziply fiber but it’s not in our neighborhood yet and I’m reluctant to go back to cable simply for the costs.  

J
Userlevel 1
Badge

We had the same issues with our 5G gateway device. We had only 2 bars which was supposed to be enough for a signal, however, when we had a signal our service was extremely slow and it was constantly dropping completely. We contacted customer support, went through all the troubleshooting with engineering (checking the signal, switching towers, moving the device around, etc). Finally, requested T-Mobile reactivate our previous device (the 4G LTE small white box).  Solved the problem instantly, strong signal, good speed, no drops, no problem streaming. After reactivating and connecting the 4G LTE Gateway the tech essentially admitted that the new 5G service is essentially a work in progress and isn’t up and running smoothly.  He said they are working on it and would contact us to upgrade our hardware to 5G when it was functioning properly in our area. Hope this is helpful.

 

J

My service drops out multiple times a day.  In each instance, there is a message on the gateway that the modem chip is down.  I’m already on my second device after the first one also displayed the same message.  The gateway is on a timer so it reboots once a day at 3am.  It makes no difference.  Is any one else getting the “modem chip down” critical message?

B

Similar to others, I am having dropped internet on my Gateway. When it’s connected, I’m very happy with my service. The problem is that it drops during important Zoom calls.

My computer is hard wired to the Gateway via ethernet and during Zoom calls I disable the computer’s wifi. When it disconnects, I quickly turn my Gateway off and back on. Can rejoin the Zoom call within 2 minutes. The disconnects are inconsistent. Sometimes I won’t have any. Sometimes I’ve had it happen once per hour.

Here is a screenshot of my signal info:

I’ve read most of the responses on this thread regarding over heating and also using Cellmapper. How can I use this information to zero in on the problem and what can I do about it?

F

RESOLUTION FOUND; NOT GOOD. SO, I was experiencing network drop issues and saw how some callers had reached out to tech chat. Tech chat advised them to put a fan to cool the gateway down. I ran a test to see if it's a heating issue. And IT IS. I have a small fan I used (picture attached) for the test. Without it, the gateway would drop signal down to 1gb or below and cause me to lose connection to my work calls which is a BIG NONO if I want to stay Work-From-Home. With it, I maintain speeds of 300+mb/s. With that said, I really hope this new router they are coming out with addresses this issue. The trash(can) gateway right now can't handle the data coming in and the heat produced by the data flow causes it to overheat. The gateway does have vents at the top and bottom so I can push the heat out of the gateway with a fan. However, now I'm using extra electricity to cool the gateway down and now I don't enjoy the extra air blowing on me. It's still winterish (54°F) , so I don't know if this trick will work in the summertime where it can get 70°+ in my room. Hopefully, the new router will be a good exchange (FOR FREE) AND they release it soon; otherwise, I will have to go back to exp Verizon.

 

 

 

 

B

I have the Nokia GW running 1.2103.00.0338, HW Version: 3TG00739AABB.

I started graphing the  signal strength of the LTE and 5G radios.

Starting a couple weeks ago the 5G channel drops and comes back randomly throughout the day, causing packet loss and latency.

My T-Mobile 5G phone shows no issues.

I also noticed that the GW is running hot even though it is not in direct sunlight.

Have also tried disabling the on-board WiFi and just using my mesh wifi connected via ethernet to no avail.

I have it sitting in a window with virtually direct line-of-site to the nearest tower half a mile away.

Super frustrating as it was working fine until recently, other than the 5G channel would drop occasionally and only come back with a hard reboot.  I have not tracked SW updates so I’m not sure if maybe a recent one caused this issue.

 

N
Userlevel 2
Badge

Well, I have to say I have been pleasantly surprised that my internet dropping problem seems to have been resolved. My gateway has held a connection without dropping for 19d 1h 31m. Perhaps there was a firmware upgrade that fixed the repeated dropouts or maybe the “tower maintenance” argument was legit. The current firmware I show is 1.2103.00.0338. Anybody else experience a similar result?

W

I’m having a problem with T-Mobile 5g home internet that has not been resolved despite many calls in to the help line.  I’ve had T-Mobile 5g home internet for almost a month now, and the short version is that every so often the gateway drops the network.  When I say “drop the network,” I mean to say it throws everything off of the Wifi that it’s broadcasting, and anything plugged in via ethernet says “no network found.  (To elaborate this point, cell phones switch to cellular data because wifi is gone for them, and computers hardwired into the gateway think that they are no longer plugged into anything.)  Turning off the gateway and turning it back on resolves the issue, but doesn’t prevent it from happening again.  Whatever is happening doesn’t seem to affect our connection speed/strength when the gateway IS providing signal to devices in the home, but due to the nature of our work, we need a connection that won’t just disconnect randomly.  

 

To address this, T-mobile has so far run a bunch of tests on their end, and seem to have ruled out a tower issue (which makes sense, as the tower shouldn’t have anything to do with whether or not the devices on the gateway’s wifi or ethernet connection get thrown off of the network.)  They’ve sent me a replacement gateway, which is experiencing the exact same problem (3 times in the last 36 hours, in fact).   I’ve noticed that the device gets pretty warm, so I set up a computer case fan as a cooler to force air through the device, thinking that perhaps it’s an issue with the device overheating.  However, while the gateway is notably cooler than it was without the fan, it has not prevented the issue from persisting.  The last thing that I can think to do (and my most recent attempt at resolving this issue) is to plug a router into the gateway via ethernet, and allow the router to handle the wifi/connections w/ devices in the house, and to disable wifi from the gateway all together.  Maybe the gateway is simply too overburdened with connections and gets somehow overwhelmed and shuts down, and having the router handle the “heavy lifting” of taking care of all of the individual device connections will resolve it?  I don’t have a great deal of faith that this will fix the issue (as the gateway also kicks ethernet things off of the network when it experiences this problem), but I’m running out of options/ideas of what to do in order to just get a stable, constant internet service.   

 

Is anybody else having this issue, has anybody resolved this issue, or does anybody have any advice or feedback regarding how I might get this resolved so that I can get back to having stable internet?

I am also having this issue.  I am on my third 5g Gateway, tried switching SIM cards, use a cooling fan and off-loaded the WiFi duties to a Netgear Nighthawk.  I get two to three bars and drop a few times a day.  I finally bought connection monitoring software and it reports that, when the network fails, “URL domain names are not being resolved but IP based traffic is still flowing over the connection”. It seems that, after a minute or two in this state, the box resets the connection resulting in a new IP address. Just figured I’d share that!

Ya it's definitely not wifi related. There is some kind of backend authentication that seems like it's periodically hiccuping and loosing auth for about 5-10 secs

W

I've had this service for 2 months now. In fact paid my second bill 2 days ago. Started about a week ago maybe 3 or 4 times a day, however today Ive lost the gateway 17 times. I power cycle my router on a daily because the new nokia5g tower is....well....of horrible design to say the least. My tower stays in a location that is dry and 65°F at ALL times. This happens on my 2 wired lines out of the router so no wifi is a part of this. Never ANY errors on cellular or lan logs just a complete drop in gateway connection then 10 secs later back in business. EXTREMELY irritating when playing online games because of the obvious disconnect and then PC telling me no internet. I worked as a repairman for network operations at Birch Telecom for yearsssss but that was before 4th gen wireless rolled out. All of my signals and noise ratios are actually nice. For some reason it acts like authentication is lost for a moment and then re-auths the network. All in all from logs and watching signals, everything looks great but it's not...lol.

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