5G Home Internet nightly slow down

Et al, Agree with Schwibs I CANNOT recommend this service any longer. I have been a Tmobile HI customer for 3 years. I would preach TMobile HI is the best no need for Spectrum, etc. Fast forward, Tmobile service has degraded to the point that their price lock pricing is not worth it. IF I have to work nights on the internet I will not keep their service due to speed drastically dropping, increased latency and the uplink being no good at 3-5MBs (will not support video teleconferencing). I will give this 4th gateway (within 1.5 years) sent from Tmobile a try, IF no luck will go back to Spectrum/Brightspeed. It was good while it lasted—NEED the US Govt to step in and resolve these large telecommunications companies from robbing us blind.

TLDR—but a good read.

FYSA up front, my background IT professional 20+yrs, newbie to these forums. Take no offense—do not ask me basic 101 questions. I do this for living here and in austere locations.

Seems like after COVID customer service across the board has gone down hill in the USA. Pre COVID laws protected the customer, post COVID the laws protect the companies and not the customer. You see arbitration clause as the norm if we use any service and as companies continue to sub contract, creating roadblocks for us to resolve anything but taking our money. They do not offer money back for the down times/days we have no service (i recall getting prorated credits for days without internet from TWC—I cannot even get that from Tmobile for the nightly decreased speeds/latency that do not support my networks. So hmm I know Im not the only one experiencing this. Tmobile gets 100% of their monthly payment for degrade service—nightly. How is this America? Crazy 180 turn around on services in our country. I have friends stationed overseas paying way less for guaranteed internet speeds, no issues.

I have home internet at two different locations in USA. Never had issues when they rolled out 5GHI in NYC (2022), speeds on Arcadyan KVD21 5bars Excellent-downlink 700+ Mbs/30+Mbs consistently. Second location North Carolina (2022) Sagemcom FAST5688W intermittent between 4bars Very good/3bars Good (Good is majority of the time) 400Mbs/30Mbs. In NC after couple months the gateway started to toggle between N41 (faster) and N71(slower) bands. Troubleshot with TMobile tech dept.—no fix action/no resolution. They sent me a replacement GW (gateway) Arcadyan KVD21 sig strength 3bars Good, speed 325Mbs/30Mbs. Worked great for couple months then same story speed decreased, latency went up. Canceled TMobile, went back to Spectrum for couple months. 

Came back to Tmobile during a promo and cell towers being moded by me. Again Fall 2023 sign up with TMobile HI receive a Arcadyan KVD21, sig 3bars Good, speed 300Mbs/15Mbs drop from last year. Worked great, preached the TMobile script again. This year had more latency issues ping 400-500ms—YES troubleshot with TMobile, yes have the optimum location in house for cell tower reception. GW is 10ft high and LOS (line of sight) nothing but empty fields and then tower. TMobile sends another Arcadyan KVD21. No issues for motnhs speeds good latency good. Now in 2024 i notice in my area when spectrum changes prices and speed availability drops TMobile speed drops as well. Also June 2024 Federal money ran out for the American Connectivity Program ACP ran out, which also means the Federal supplement money the Government gave to these mega telecommunications companies also dried up (did you know that?) Then internet prices go up/speeds go down and the telecommunications company make it seem like nothings changed. For SA the speeds under the ACP program was 30Mbs-100MBs for free to those that qualified, is now a paid plan. During this time is when I noticed my service degrade latency up speeds down, nightly (Yes I have read the TMobile prioritization policy. But where I am at there is no cell traffic at night because the Interstate is closed M-F for construction for months now. Called TMobile to cancel they said we will send you another GW, received today lets see how long this one works.

IF this craps out I’ll have to go back to Spectrum hardwire/fiber. Till Metronet starts laying down their fiber backbone.

Thanks so much for the reply.  There is no freeway nearby and the city has maybe 16,000 people in it.  Download speeds range from 300 to under 5 and upload from about 20 to 4.  The patterns of slowdown don’t correspond to rush hour but instead seem to relate to peak TV times.  They were especially bad during the evening when the Olympics were on and caused the TV stream to buffer and sputter repeatedly.  I have used the location functoin in the app to find a better spot, although there is no ideal place on the 3rd floor of this townhouse because the only windows are on the opposite side of the nearest tower.  All that said, this has worked exceptionally for 10 of the 11 months I have used it, rarely going below 100 mbps which is adequate for us.  Then the bottom started dropping out at night.  As for the metrics, they are as follows:  Received signal strngth indicator, LTE: Good, Reference signal received quality: 5G and LTE, good.  Reference signal received power:  5G and LTE both poor.  Signal interference to noise ratio: 5G: Excellent, LTE: Poor.  Band:  5G: n41, LTE: b66, Cell Global Identity:  LTE:  31026068876035.   Channel Quality Indication:  LTE:  4

None of this makes any sense to me.  Hope it does to you.  Thanks again.  

@ECMP it is helpful to have your gateway metrics and an understanding of your location. Are you located near a freeway? If so, the morning and evening commute traffic will impact your signal (download/upload speeds) as T-mobile prioritizes cellular traffic over home internet traffic. For example, I am near a freeway and my speeds drop to about 90-110 Mbps down during commute hours and rise to 150-250 Mbps at night with less traffic. 

Using your T-Mobile Internet app, tap the “MORE” link at the bottom of the screen, then Advanced cellular metrics, then 5G. What are your RSRP, RSRQ, and SINR metrics? Which band are you connected to (n41 or n71)? 

See the chart below for interpreting the metrics.

 

I’m not getting anywhere near the type of services that I got when I first signed up well over a year ago. I currently average around 6 mbps.  Yes you read that right … 6.  I used to get around 100. I have moved the gateway to every spot in my house. Not sure where to go from here. I don’t want to give up the service and switch but I work from home and this just isn’t working. 

Exact same issue here.  I have respectable speeds during the day and most week nights.  But during peak hours on weekends, my speeds plummt from 200-300 MBPS to anywhere between 5 and 12.  I have tried rebooting the router without success.  During the Olympics they were even worse.  Any suggestion that router placement is the issue cannot account for the fact that the speed is great except duirng times of peak demand.  It is hard to escape the conclusion that the system simply cannot handle the traffic.  The TVs start to buffer rendering the service next to useless.  I am hard-pressed to think that there is any alternative other than pony up the extra money for a hard-wired service.  I like TMobile and go all the way back to the VoiceStream days.  But this is my second rodeo with the wireless service, the first being a disaster, and my patience is wearing thin.  Has this service just been oversold?    

I am yet another user having the SAME EXACT ISSUE. For me it’s the 3-6am range which sucks because i wake up really early and use my PC. I’m wired into my hotspot and there’s no reason for anything on my end to slow down. It’s all T-Mobile. Cell users get priority ?? That’s fine. How many people are actually on their phone as i write this at 3:30am?? I just got a new piece of hardware. There is absolutely no reason for almost no bandwidth coming through 

T-Mobile has oversubscribed their home internet, plain and simple. You get good speeds during the day when most people are working, once they’re home and streaming video and the like the network is congested and speeds fall off dramatically. It’s a great service if you work evenings and use it during the day only! LOL

I hope you all get some sort of resolution. Happy hunting!

Sorry friends, I forgot to update when this got resolved. Here’s hoping you can dedicate the time it took me to get this resolved (if what I did even affected the results).

What I did that was extremely time consuming was I constantly called and chatted customer service the second it throttled or slowed to the crawl. I called and called and argued and argued. After about three days and seriously considering cutting back to my old plan I was told to send my unit back. I drove to two T-Mobile stores and forgive me but it’s been almost a year since then and I can’t recall if they shipped it for me in the store but I recall a distinct displeasure of dealing with the store personnel. Either way, the old unit went back to HQ and I got a new one in the mail 2-3 days later.

I made a call to the local store to ask about coverage and they said they don’t offer home internet at my address when I in fact had a gateway running previously AND a new one on the way from main customer support. I’m not sure if they had beefed up the tower and were previously shifting to the Narrowband 5G cell beam in the evenings while they did work previously. But by the time the new gateway came in my speeds were solid and I haven’t noticed any issues.

If anyone wants to doubt my credentials and ability to troubleshoot, I’ve worked in IT and communications for 12 years, all 12 of those doing majority wireless transmission work and 8 years networking experience. I’m very well versed in transmission of information, so no it wasn’t an IP setting on my laptop, it wasn’t the WiFi frequency of 2.4GHz or 5GHz. It wasn’t band overlap with my neighbors WiFi. It was not a throttling on my PC to conserve resources. It had to be something on T-Mobile’s end, but it’s resolved for me now.

@MAUI671 He posted the same exact thing in my thread.  Your post is very clear stating that your internet is stable during the day, it has a “Very Good” signal, and is gets worse at night and you haven’t changed anything.  I see a consistent pattern of people stating that their speeds significantly decrease late at night.  Hopefully someone will escalate this to the technical team who can state why this is happening.  My guess is it may be due to nightly IT maintenance but it’s purely speculation.

“During the day my gateway pulls about 500 Mbps and has a “Very Good” signal. Without moving or changing anything about the setup, usage area, or anything, around 8PM Eastern my speeds go down to MAX 5 Mbps.

Nothing has changed other than the time of the day.”

@MAUI671 I have the exact same issue except my speeds drop after 2am central time.  My modem also reboots.  I also agree with the fact that support only offers reboot as a solution.  It’s extremely frustrating for me.

I am having this same problem AGAIN!!! I believe it was around 2020 when I switched from cable to T-Mobile. Did not like long periods of outage using cable. Seems every time a storm comes through the cable is down for days while they repair. 
 

was pleased for awhile until this problem showed it’s nasty head. Then it started happening here in Tyler Texas. Try getting through to complain and go through all their BS conversations! Anyway, this went on for awhile and out of the blue, it was fixed. No communication as to what occurred!!! Figured maybe they added a tower or boosted signal.

it worked very well until just recently the same story. The same thing that happened then is the same story now! How about some up front messages to your clients as to what happened? What you are doing about it? When will it be resolved? Some recompense as to giving us a discount for failed service!

Steve 

Update:

Got a new device, and had trouble connecting and running speedtest.  I went back to the store, and the manager said since I am not a mobile customer, don't login to the T-Life app with the T-Mobile provided phone number.  He showed me just redownload the app, connect to the router, and everything was good.  Good speeds are back.  I guess my device was just old.

Southern Maryland here.  I've had T-Mobile Home internet for almost two years.  I swapped from the local hardwire provider because the poor service didn't justify the price. Up until a few weeks ago, it was usually great, sometimes just good enough, sometimes bad.  It has seemed to get worse over the past few months, but not constantly. Now its been bad for coming up on two weeks.  20mbps down and 10mbps up is usually plenty for us, and we could make up the difference with our mobile coverage from Verizon.  I've been running speed tests throughout the last 24 hours while at home, some after 10pm, and before 7am, getting numbers as low as .017mbps down, 0.0mbps up.  Now 7mbps down seems like blazing speeds.  

Contacted support this morning, did a factory reset of my device, still low numbers.  He said take it to a T-Mobile location, have them look at it, and maybe get a replacement.  If that helps, I'll update my post.

Same with me. This is my most current speed test. It starts slowing down around 2pm and stays that way till 7pm, then again at 9pm. I understand that the internet service is deprioritizing when traffic gets heavy, but this is ridiculous. I just assume that they oversold the area I live in and don’t have enough bandwidth. I’m going to have to change to a different provider unless this is resolved. 
No need to ask about placement, I used the app and am directly in a window. Also, please don’t ask about metrics, that is not a me problem, it’s a T-Mobile problem. 

I feel like I shouldn't be complaining because compared to everyone else I seem to be a lucky one. But I feel like I'm getting less than someone who is paying less than I am. Context: When I first got my home internet I was elated, 400mbs down/ 60mbs up. Few weeks later my Internet speed goes down. However not like you'd expect. My down speeds is roughly 200 mbs down on a bad and still can cap off at 400. But now my up speed is borderline unusable. About 2-6 mbs and I've even seen it hit 1mbs before. I can't participate in video calls for work, I can't send large files conveniently, and multiplayer gaming is out of the question. The most frustrating part is that my brother, whom I live with, that has his own T-Mobile home internet, got on when they had that $40 a month promo and is getting speeds within the 20-40 range up. So he's paying less and getting better results. It can't possibly be a coverage thing since I can see the tower from my window. Talk to customers service and they just want you to restart over and over. It can't be end of the month throttling because I'm getting this even now with the new billing cycle. Fast download speed, abysmally slow up speed. I have tried everything that others here have suggested so please don't reply with "did you try moving the router." It's in the best spot possible. I really don't know what to do now.

For my 1st 8 months or so I was bragging about Tmobile coverage and Higher speeds (over 75mps) than my Xfinity “high speed”. Since then my highest daily speed has dropped to around 30mps (off peak hours) and my average download all day is 10-20. In a multiple TV house we hit the max gig throttle in the first couple of days in the new billing period. Terribly disappointed with them and I am now in search of alternatives.

Boo, tsk tsk to T-mobile, false advertising, rehearsed support scripts, non High Speed, non-unlimited.

Truly limited and not very pleased. (forget trying to do any gaming anymore)

I restart my gateway 25-30 times day.  Sometimes I get lucky and get a good connection, but most times the connection is SUPER slow… under 1mps.  But I always have 5 bar cell connection on the gateway, so it must be their network is overwhelmed.

I believe T-Mobile has put a cap on this. I’ve been a customer for around 10 months and I was getting around 800+ download and 90+ upload until about a month ago. Now I can’t break 150 download on a good day any time of the day and my upload seems to be capped at 7.4 upload. T-Mobile gives me the same crap answers I’m sure everyone else is getting. I’ve rebooted several times and I’ve repositioned. I have EXCELLENT service with full bars and I believe I have the latest modem they are offering atm. I’m considering making the move back to Cox since they are putting Fiber in our neighborhood. It’ll be more expensive but at least I won’t have to compete with cell phones!

In my location with the Arcadyan G4AR, during peak hours where people are home after work and school it will slow down a bit. For me between 6pm through 9 or 10 pm. I may get download speeds of 80-100mbps download. After 10 or so it's back to almost 300mbps download. During non peak, 4 am or 5 it can get to near 600mbps. During the day 6am till 5pm I’m in the range of 200-300mbps.

Don’t know if it’s related, ever since they introduced TLife connection has gotten worse and worse. I reset my internet and got very little increase. Customer service has a script they have to follow so even if you tell them you unplugged and waited 5-10 minutes then plugged back in 10 times, they won’t listen and will still follow the script. They are mostly useless for those of us that know what we are doing. T-Mobile needs to cut out the middleman and connect us to the engineers immediately upon advising the Rep of what has been done.

I have the same issue that everyone else is having and if course we would be heavy users of data when we stream TV, etc. I am going back to my internet company and get wired in for consistency. I don't just slow down sparatically and never at a given time but if it was any slower I would be going backward. I haven't been able to watch a full 1/2 hour show in a year. I have done all the placements, re pacements, bought expensive boosters etc and nothing works. I don't even get 5G readings in the app. I have missed calls, messages, work calls etc. Can't do it anymore. T-Mobile just lied to the public to get the sales pure and simple. End of rant. 

Just sad and false advertising. It's not unlimited data, in any way. I've unfortunately have had their home internet service since it was originally introduced and have suffered from these random speed changes the whole time. At first, I would have to reset the gateway every few days, now it's daily. My download speeds are as low as 1.0 mbps, that's ridiculous. It tests in the 100's of mbps during the day but as soon as 7 o'clock arrives the speed disappears. Numerous changes of placement, countless of calls and yet no changes whatsoever. Support's response? There's always maintenance being done on the tower. Always. Just as there's always a ticket that's been placed prior to my call. And yet, after all of this, not a single change. Which is exactly why I'm switching to Verizon. I highly recommend it to everyone else, they're rated higher/better than T-mobile for home internet providers for both speeds and service. I'm just tired of the same scenario, with the same useless response/solutions. Anyone remember the definition of insanity? 

I’ve been using their services for a couple of months now and the home internet is horrible after 8 pm and when it’s raining is worse. I’ve been experiencing the same issues, they have replaced the gateway 3 times and did the same “engineer thing” for a few days and the answer was that everything was working perfectly…another answer a different day was that their were working on one of the towers and told me to use the 4g tower instead, totally nightmare. Long story short I started using my phone hotspot during the night, and the last answer they gave me a few days ego was that I don’t have a contract with them so I’m free to go to any other carrier because they understand it’s frustrating.

Customer service is good same as phone but home internet is extremely disappointing.

I contacted tech support and they said that there was a technical issue in the area (90731) that already had a ticket. He added my complaint to the ticket. At the moment, things are good, but speeds do drop here and there. 

Having the same result here, but my upload speeds never change. Daytime is 150/70, evening is 10/70. Seems that only download speeds are affected. I have called support twice. The first tech reset something and fixed immediately until the next day. Called that evening and this tech could not fix anything. I’m currently waiting for an engineer for the elevated ticket. Hopefully someone can fix this issue as it’s obviously not my gateway as they “suspect.”