Hey all, I’ve had the black 5G gateway for a couple days now, and have been a T-Mobile customer for just as long. I guess the issue I’m having is looking like one that a lot of other people are as well.
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. I have a ticket open for the “local engineering department” to troubleshoot. It’ll randomly be good during the night and then go back to the unusable 5 Mbps.
I relayed this to Customer Care, and while they seem sympathetic to the plight, they ultimately just want me to continuously restart the gateway so they can reconnect it to the tower because it has “stopped communicating.” Is this the common reply that everyone is getting? Restart on restart while waiting for engineers to troubleshoot your wifi, only to then get told you need to restart to be reconnected to the tower, and then ultimately a factory default when they’ve exhausted their checklist?
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Been having the same exact issue. Every night it slows down significantly. There is no change in placement that improves the situation. Any desire to solve this problem TMobile?
Me too, daily service slowdown around midnight on 5G internet thing and on cell phone. Annoying Should I switch to other cell and internet provider?
Anyone have any updates on this? Running into the exact same issue word for word. 8 o’clock in the evenings for me. From 200mbps to 5mbps if I’m lucky.
He is not the only one only mine hits at midnight. I'm not getting anywhere near his speeds during the daytime I usually average between 90 and 125 and for download it's about 35. After midnight it will drop down to 8 to 30, and for download believe it or not I will still get 35. It's something that T-Mobile is doing on its end it's not something that the customers are doing on their end. I'm about to go back to the chord just for the consistency. I am literally resetting my modem three to four times every night. It is good for about 20 minutes and then right back down to nothing and I am one below full bars as far as signal strength to the 5G Tower... Don't have that problem with my phone's hotspot if I decide to use that so it's not a signal to the tower issue it's a hardware issue or a network tower downgrade to conserve on money or power after peak hours. I know it's hella frustrating though.
I am having the same issues. Service was great for about 8 months and now is terribly slow and almost unusable in the evening. My guess is that the network is congested and needs to be upgraded. I’ve done a ton of repositioning and closely watching the metrics to get the best signal possible.
I not only have slow speeds, but extremely high latency which is terrible for trying to play games online. I can’t recommend the service any longer.
I am new to t mobile as well and experiencing the same issue. Slow down isn't even the correct term for it. Took 4 hours not not even see a half hour episode! Reset the device so mant times my head hurts and I live within sight distance of a tower. I left a service that wasn't fantastic but so much better than this and not able to get that plan back as it is no longer available. T mobile needs to step it up quickly or ditch the false advertising thst is currently being used! So frustrating and disappointing!!!
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!
Funny most T-mobile home internet users don’t know they are treated like 2nd class citizens and are always prioritized lower than cell phone users. That’s why the service is so cheap lol. If you want to know for sure just push it with support and eventually they will admit that home internet users are always considered heavy data users and deprioritized. So when lots of people are using the network (ie. Evening) your speeds will plummet as you are deprioritized over cell phone users. I’ve had it for a month and I’m canceling, service is just so inconsistent. You can read all about how it here:
“T-Mobile Home Internet (available in select locations) customers receive the same network prioritization as Heavy Data Users”
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.
Exact same symptoms here. My gateway in in a woindow and I get 200 mps + at times nad then slow to less than 2 mps yesterday. T- Mobile please fix this.
The CEOs policy is to oversell the network and degrade the quality for all to boost subscriber counts. I hope his shareholders start to discover that his business strategy is unsustainable and will cause massive turnover to Verizon and AT&T as their more stable networks continue to expand. The gaslighting tech support alone makes me have zero loyalty to T-Mobile. Unfortunately, options are limited where I am at so I have to endure until a proper ISP comes along.
Same problem here. I had 5G Home Internet for 10 month now. It was great the first 8 month with consistent speeds of 250+ then the trouble started. My speeds now go down as low as 1.5 mbps and are consistently in the single digits during long stretches of the day. It does seem to be worse starting at about 6 PM but sometimes I have lousy speeds all day long. It usually gets better again late at night. I called customer service yesterday and after going through reboots and factory reset to exclude any issues at my end they told me that it’s an issue at their end and they were going to refer it to engineering. The support person scheduled a follow up call with me in 3 days to see if the issue has been resolved. At least they didn’t BS me and stated that it’s a T-Mobile issue. That’s still better than Xfinity. They had me try useless stuff over and over again and I would be without Internet for several hours during the day on a regular basis. So for now I’ll wait and see if Tmobile can solve it.
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've read all these stories that share the same issue as I'm having and am wondering if I should even bother contacting support or if I'll just waste my time and they won't do anything to fix it.
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.
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.”
@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.
Hey all, I’ve had the black 5G gateway for a couple days now, and have been a T-Mobile customer for just as long. I guess the issue I’m having is looking like one that a lot of other people are as well.
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. I have a ticket open for the “local engineering department” to troubleshoot. It’ll randomly be good during the night and then go back to the unusable 5 Mbps.
I relayed this to Customer Care, and while they seem sympathetic to the plight, they ultimately just want me to continuously restart the gateway so they can reconnect it to the tower because it has “stopped communicating.” Is this the common reply that everyone is getting? Restart on restart while waiting for engineers to troubleshoot your wifi, only to then get told you need to restart to be reconnected to the tower, and then ultimately a factory default when they’ve exhausted their checklist?
Change your frequency band to 5GHz instead of automatic (2.4&5ghz) this can be done in the app under network, this fixed my slow speeds and unreliability
I was hoping to get some good solutions, but find everyone is having this same issue with the Gateway! While our signal as always read “Weak” it was fine early a.m. and day--but come 6 pm. and the slowness and literally stopage begins. Don’t even get me started on the football games!! I feel like “you get what you pay for” with this. I have spent countless hours moving this thing around---I think my first clue was when our address did not even show on the T Mobile finder. Talking to friends I take the phone off Wi-fi as cellular does not break up. Each time I call T Mobile I get the reply “plug, unplug”-right. However I finally reached a rep who told me they would be getting new towers---when I asked when she said 4th Qtr 2024!!!! Why the heck is T Mobile selling these knowing they have overloaded the area--this is why the low price. Looking at Verizon’s new tower online I got the message they are not offering in this area until they have adequate coverage. We will be returning the tower this weekend. When I see how many are affected and how long this has been going on it really tells me who TMobile is. NOT customer oriented that is for sure.
So I finally got a tech that knew what they were doing, once she force pushed the firmware update it started working again, haven't had the nightly issue since it got pushed and installed, going on about a week now..
I am having the same issue, except my router actually switches to 4G and the speedtest does not even reach 2. This happens every evening about 8:30 PM EST. I reboot several times and finally give up. I’m going to start looking for a new carrier. Daytime is fine, but after 8:30 PM EST it is impossible to watch anything on Internet TV as it pauses and spins. This is not about placement of the gateway either. I’ve gone through all those motions too. And when you call for help they make you spend hours on the phone with support people that do nothing in the end to fix it.
Actually, if cell phone users use to much data in a month, they are also tagged high-volume users and get the same priority as TM Internet customers. TMI users are just considered high-volume from the get-go...because we basically are. That said, if you look at the contract, there are some weasel-words in there about fair distribution of resources to all their users. I *think* that means if you use gobs of data (I don’t know that that means, but say approaching a TB a month), you may get assigned a lower priority than almost everyone else. I would suggest for those of you that are seeing massive slow-downs during times of congestion, that you check to see how much data you are using in a month. Do you leave TVs on for no reason? Do you watch a lot of 4K on multiple TVs? If you are in this category, that may be the reason.
@CookieJ if you have the T-Mobile home internet service, then you must qualify for being in a 5G network area and able to receive a 5G signal from a nearby cell tower.
That said, let's try to diagnose the cause so that we can resolve your issue. Please answer a few questions that will be helpful in the diagnosing the problem.
Did you use the Placement Assistant in the T-Mobile Internet app? If not, you can access it from the app Home Screen: tap the More about connection quality link on the Home Screen > Launch placement assistant > OK! Let's do this > you can watch the video if it will help, then “skip video” which will launch the placement assistant > enter your address or share location (if you use “share location” and your address shows up then you are assured to be connected to the network). It will take 30-45 seconds to confirm your location. Use the “Camera” mode for a direct visual of where your cell tower is located to where your gateway is located in your home. Try to make sure your gateway is located in a high point of your home and clear of any obstructions. Here is a helpful video:
What are your metrics - now that you are confident your gateway is located in the best possible location, your metrics will show the quality of your connection. In your T-Mobile Internet app > tap “MORE” at the bottom of the Home Screen > tap “Advanced cellular metrics” > tap “5G” > and let us know your RSRQ, RSRP, SINR and which band you are connected to. You should be on band n41 or n71. Look at the chart posted above in this thread for. the ideal readings. to get the best readings, slightly rotate your gateway about 1/8th of a turn and then check the metrics to see if they change for the better. Repeat until you get the best metrics.
Let us know the results. I hope this helps.
@copz1998 I hear your suggestion, but follow the train of thought here. The signal is 500 Mbps in its location during daytime hours. Nothing changes but the time of day. Once 8 PM Eastern hits, the signal is EXACTLY the same still, but download drops from 500 Mbps to 5 Mbps. Again, no changes but the time of day.
I’ve done the repositioning multiple times now at the behest of customer care and still to no avail. Spent more than an hour on it at this point trying to be proactive. I’ve used the app, watched the SNR, RSSI, etc. and no changes to the speed no matter how high good I get those values. Any other suggestions for me to be proactive with?
I have the same slow down almost nightly at 9:00 PM-
Curiously when the internet drops my modem and APP both say I still have a good internet connection-
Same deal restarting daily sometimes twice-
T-Mobil tech says that my problem is due to saturation of the tower-and I may have to live with this until they upgrade-
I also told the tech that my other option would be to switch to a different provider-he wasn’t too fond of that idea-
@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.
