Anyone know the secret to get a sagemcom router?

Hi @itdoesnotwork, since I’ve subscribed to TMO Hi in late Decenber 2022, I’ve had the Arcadyan KVD21 5G gateway.  I haven’t had a problem with it so far.

05-02-2023 New customer here. I got a Sagemcom box last Thursday. It ran great all day last Friday. Then it started losing the internet connection frequently. Have to reboot. Tonight I have 5G signal and 4 out of 5 bars. My pc indicates “Connected. Secure. No Internet.”  I phoned the Home Customer service number and the live tech on the phone told me the Sagemcom chips are outdated and they cannot be upgraded and that the tech folks in Atlanta cannot even work on the box remotely. HE SAID it is a known issue with the Sagemcom that they have bad chips and that I need to take the box back to the store and ask for a Nokia or Arcadyan. WHAT GIVES? I thought the Sagemcom was the latest and greatest? I still have 11 days to cancel my account completely so I hope someone can shed some light on this problem soon.  Maybe I should just stick with U-Verse, it is slower but it always works !!!!

True enough. There is NO one size fits all especially with cellular wireless. Before the signal ever reaches the gateway there are lots of potential obstacles. There are many other potential components in the gateway that could present a problem. Components out of specification or failing, heat sinks not applied properly to insure proper chip cooling, software bugs, compromised solder connections, power delivery or control being inconsistent, improper manufacturing practices leading to quality control issues etc… There are lots of things to consider. The antenna connectors maybe as they are very small and require extreme care to fix the leads to the board. If not just right it would cause resistance and signal degradation. Factors to also watch, in the cellular metrics, are the RSRQ and SINR values. If the RSRQ signal quality is poor and the SINR i.e. signal noise is also poor that will lead to poor performance as packets will possibly be damaged or lost leading to retransmissions that of course leads to delay. A good clean signal with low noise will improve performance. I would say probably more than having a stronger signal. A strong signal that is trashy will not provide a great deal of performance. 

The T-Mobile home internet mobile application may not be a stellar management tool but it is better than nothing. It is good to be familiar with it so when you need it you know where to go. I hope the Sagemcon works out well. If it is working that means you don’t have to fight the mobile application.😎

You are right.  And maybe the other two Nokias also had the same lose antenna connection problem to cause the exact same problems.  Perhaps there is an issue with their connectors.  I’m happy your nokia works perfectly for you in your situation!  Now at least I have something that will work for me in my situation.

The Nokia must have had some issue. It might have been something simple like a lose antenna connection. The connectors on those antenna cables are small and delicate. Hard to know without proper diagnostics. 
Well it seems to be an improvement so that is the important part. 

Was actually able to get one.  Just taking a chance I stopped in at a local tmo store. They came out with an actual stagemcom! It's hooked up and what a difference! Same exact location, one to two bars Nokia, four bars stagemcom.  5 to 12 MBps Nokia, 60 MBps stagemcom.  So far 3 hour later no drops, no disconnections, no issues.  Never went that long with the Nokia!

Greg

If you think an Arcadyan or Sagemcon gateway is going to resolve issues and be internet nirvana well the obscurity and a lax support engineer might be a path to take but it might not resolve the actual root cause of the issues and might make it more difficult to trouble shoot and know what is going on. Before jumping into that bag of snakes it is good to know a bit more. The three gateways are each from a different hardware vendor but the reality is that the two newer gateways are not all that much of an improvement if any over the original Nokia. You might be trading one problem for others. The policy is to replace like with like, but why does T-Mobile seem to say one is not better than the other they are intended to be “equivalent” gateways. The Sagemcon was added to the hardware pool to provide more inventory for new deployments with new subscribers. There is an article about this, seriously.

So, beware what you wish for. I have had a Nokia gateway since the middle of January 2021 and I would not trade it for either of the two newer ones. All of the issues we have experienced here have been with T-Mobile’s cellular equipment upstream. The Nokia I have has never had any heat related issue, no SIM card carrier issues, no power problems, and no major flaws. Maybe it has some warts but I can overlook those. Each and every time we had 5-6 days of disruptions it was always due to some upstream problem. Every time. I don’t discount the possibility that the gateway you have could have an issue but you might not improve the solution with a gateway swap. You might just be introducing new variables and not like the more limited management of the gateway with ONLY the mobile application. The Nokia may not be a great gift to mankind but it does have more configuration capability, and a WEB GUI management interface that is useful. The cellular metrics are easily accessed via a browser OR if you want the mobile application. Not so with the other two gateway offerings. I find the mobile application a bit fickle and often I have seen it crash or hang up my phone. Maybe it has improved but it is not obvious to me as it still is an argument every time I try to use it. I am grateful for the WEB GUI management option. 

It is possible the location you are in just does not receive sufficient signal strength or quality. It could just as well be there are problems with the cellular equipment your gateway connects to. It might be possible that they could force the gateway to another tower. If there are other towers I have seen them use this as an option and in some cases it was successful. It really is good to know where the problem really is. No I do NOT work for T-Mobile and have no incentive to mis-direct you. 

gregma wrote:

Oh, I have no problem getting a “black box”.  But it’s not the sagemcom, it’s the Arcadyan.  

They are probably saving those for new subscribers. I would wait a couple months for them to have sufficient stock to take care of existing customer. That’s what I did for Arcadyan.

I haven’t heard any compelling reason to change to the Sagecomm.  Arcadyan solved the trashcan issue of overheating so worth the “upgrade”.

Oh, I have no problem getting a “black box”.  But it’s not the sagemcom, it’s the Arcadyan.  

gregma wrote:

I’ve been struggling for over a year with problem on the trashcan.  Everytime I try to upgrade to a new type modem the answer always is “we only replace what you already have”.  I tried to upgrade to the new arcadyan, and nope, will only give you a new trashcan (even though no luck on my third trashcan...)  Now that they have the new sagemcom which even tmobile support says should fix my issues, I can’t get them to give me one!  

 

Anyone have any secrets or know the secret handshake or password to actually get them to upgrade me from the old trashcan to the new sagemcom?

I “upgraded” my trashcan to Arcadyan by just playing dumb. I basically said, “hey I spoke to another support person a couple days ago because I couldn’t watch YouTube and after asking me a million questions, he said I should get the new black box arca, Waka or something like that so that’s why I’m calling back. He said the arca thing had more bytes and pings but I have no idea what those are but as long as it fixes YouTube then it’s cool”.

I got a Arcadyan shipped to me and a prepaid label to ship the trashcan back in the same box.

Never ever make the support person feel like you know more than they do or you will get no sympathy. The acting dumb ensures this with the added bonus of making the support person decide whether to spend hours explaining everything to you or just take 5 min to send you a new box.

You may get asked a few new questions but you have to play dumb and convincingly. For example if they ask what the problem is and what did you try to fix, say something like “I get no videos and the support guy said for me to try to point my tower thingy more to the north, but the thing is round and I’m like WTF is north? I think he said this arca tower is a cube so yeah, that makes sense right? there a back, there’s front, there’s left and right.”

Ramble a bit so they know this call is going to go on for a very long time.

There is no guarantee of this always works, but it’s worth a try.