Solved

Brand new to home Internet and hoping to improve speed

  • 18 December 2022
  • 36 replies
  • 1362 views
T
Badge

I read a bunch of the horror stories in here, but decided to try T-Mobile’s home internet anyhow ‘cause I ALSO read some of the “I get 200+ Mb/s and it NEVER drops below 100” topics.  I’m in a town of 20,000 a ways south of Minneapolis.

I have 2 Galaxy S22 phones and at the moment they’re getting about 14-16 Mb/s, which is ALSO what the home internet is getting.  BUT, minute to minute, speeds on all the devices fluctuates wildly.  It can be 4 Mb/s 1 minute and 15 the next, then back to 2.

I don’t know how accurate or consistent speedtest.net is, so is there a better tool for getting good data on speed?

I did the setup with the phone app.  And when I told it to find the tower it pointed North.  There aren’t any towers I know of that are north, but the app said there was.  Since it was next to me, I pointed it North, just in case.  Got about 14-16 Mb/s.  Turned it East, toward downtown, which is straight through the window in the office and got about 14-16 Mb/s.  Turned it south and got about the same.  Didn’t seem to matter.  NO direction EVER produced anything like the number I’m seeing from others in here who aren’t happy with 50 or 60 Mb/s.

I put cellmapper on the phone and it pointed directly at the tower downtown - about 300 yards away.  So, I put the box in the window pointing down town and got about 12-14 Mb/s.

Moved it to the center of the house so it was between wife and me, and it got about 10-20 Mb/s most of the time.  About the same as sitting in the office window on on the desk next to me.

A little while ago I moved it so it’s 10 feet from the wife, pointing out a window directly at the tower and it got about 7 - 10 Mb/s, maxed out around 14 Mb/s.

Both phones and the home Internet all say they’ve got 5G, but unless I’m doing something wrong, this has to be about the slowest 5G around…

Is there anything I should be doing differently?  Does pointing the thing toward where I THINK a tower is make any difference?  Am I three blocks from the downtown tower and just in some kind of 5G wasteland and out of luck?

 

icon

Best answer by iTinkeralot 19 December 2022, 01:06

View original

36 replies

iTinkeralot
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +8

If you get the PCI value you can search for it on CellMapper.net and locate the tower that serves that signal out. With a 4G LTE / 5G NR capable phone it should be possible to obtain the cellular metrics for both signals. The bars on the LED screen are rather generic and do not provide enough information. It does not sound like you are receiving a 5G signal with those speeds or it is a very poor signal reception. 

You state you are using CellMapper on your phone so are you looking at 4G or 5G signaling or both?

With CellMapper.net in a browser you can provide your area code to get the general location and then display 4G LTE, 5G NR, or both. I find filtering for one or the other helpful. You will see more 4G LTE towers and IF the 5G cell you receive is on the map that really helps but CellMapper is not 100% as it does rely upon users using the Android application and uploading the findings to the server to have the data installed into the database. This does require an account but it does not cost anything to set up. CellMapper seems to be one of the best resources for locating the cells still. Below is a chart that will help you determine more about your cellular signals. Use the T-Mobile home internet mobile application on your phone to see the cellular metrics. Determine if you really are receiving a functional 5G signal.

 

T
Badge

I’m very new to cellmapper, and can’t run it on any of the actual computers because it insists I’m using an ad blocker.  Even when I turn off ALL the extensions in Firefox or Chrome it still complains.  So, it’s not very useful on the computer. 

It SHOWS three towers nearby, but nothing about which one would be used here, or anything else.

Thus, I ran it on the cell phone.

BTW:  At the moment, the desktop is getting somewhere between .5 Mb/s (yes, 500k) and 2.1 Mb/s.  The cell phone has dropped out of 5G and it got 3.9 Mb/s a minute ago.

As far as 4G or 5G or whatever, I don’t know what it’s showing.  In the home internet app, I can see devices connected (or could, before things turned to *&^%$ a little while ago), and the netword STILL says the connection is “Excellent”.  I have no idea what PCI is, or how to relate any metrics - are you talking about the stuff in the “more” tab?  If so, which ones?

At the moment, there’s not even enough bandwidth available to SEND this entry.  I had to switch back to the old DSL to get enough network.

 

403 ERROR

The request could not be satisfied.

Request blocked. We can't connect to the server for this app or website at this time. There might be too much traffic or a configuration error. Try again later, or contact the app or website owner.
If you provide content to customers through CloudFront, you can find steps to troubleshoot and help prevent this error by reviewing the CloudFront documentation.

Generated by cloudfront (CloudFront)

Request ID: 9Ym2IOUMrdtooem2QzWbBWRFpUGhP1PdL_KUkXwsNletJnd-xXZq5Q==

 

After which nothing T-Mobile was reachable from any of my networks for a couple hours.

F
Userlevel 7
Badge +11

Just as a note… I may me taking some assumptions here, but I am under the assumption that T-Mobile home internet is ‘deprioritized’ out of the box.  I have 1 cell tower close to my house - LTE only, and 2 5G,  towers ‘nearby’.  TMobile home internet picks up both LTE and n41 5G, ‘but’ service is much less usable than my cell.  Latency is high, and speeds fluctuate from 10-50Mbps, with often timeouts.  Late night it goes over 300Mbps.

On my S21, its typically well over 100Mbps, up to ~220Mbps late at night, but never picks up n41 and rarely n71.  Latency is decent and stable.

T
Badge

I’m not sure what the home Internet does as far as priority, but it MOSTLY runs about the same speeds as either of the S22s.  But, this evening, the Home Internet totally tanked.  There was a period where you couldn’t even connect to it.  At the moment, my S22 is getting about 34 Mb/s.  The HI is getting just over 3 Mb/s…  So there must be something going on, I just don’t know enough to know what it is.

BUT, we hadn’t originally planned to get the Home Internet, so if I can’t get some kind of resolution from the “home internet” support people tomorrow it’ll go back and we’ll stay with the 15-year-old DSL that only gets 20 Mb/s, but reliably does about 15, which is adequate for what we use it for… 

iTinkeralot
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +8

I suggest you contact T-Mobile support and have them provide you with more information about the actual cell coverage in the area. They may be deploying 5G coverage but it sounds like it is not close enough to be very functional. That tower you can see might not be hosting T-Mobile cells. I know the tower that serves the cells we connect to is 5.3 miles due north and we have clear line of sight. I don’t mean to be the grinch but you might be in a cellular dead zone or at the edge of a cell reach. The tower you do see downtown might be hosting T-Mobile cells but your location might still be on the edge of the Fresnal zone. The cell emits the waves in a shape somewhat like a blimp or football shape referred to as the Fresnal zone. If there is insufficient downward tilt of the cell the sweet spot of the emissions are possibly well above your gateway. Often they deploy multiple cells in a location and the signals are set to try to cover the area close and farther out. T-Mobile has the information from your SIM card that should provide them with information to determine more about the connection. Maybe they are in the process of turning up the 5G delivery in the area and have not completed their work. Contacting support and pushing for answers is probably your best course of action.

R
Userlevel 4
Badge +4

Itinkeralot...a question for you.  I’m north of Durham and my cell tower is almost exactly as you described (5.5 miles, but I have line-of-sight as well).  My download averages 60 mbps, with a low of 15 and a high of 130 observed.  Uploads only a little slower than downloads typically.  Router shows 4-bars, but some of the cell metrics not so hot.  What are you seeing with yours?  (sorry for the cell hijack!)

bocaboy2591
Userlevel 5
Badge +7

I share your frustration with cellmapper in Chrome. There is no iOS app, and the web-based app also tells me to shut off ad blocker when it is already disabled. Not a well written utility.

I used it in an alternate browser and discovered where my cell tower is located, and t turns out it's an LTE tower with some 5G capability. That explains why I'm only connecting at 4G speeds, although more than sufficient for my needs. (Not a gamer.)

iTinkeralot
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +8

 

T
Badge

I’ve got an 800 number to get me to the “home internet” team, so I’ll try that when I get home in a couple hours.

Last night, from around 7 pm til sometime after 9 pm, the home internet was non-functional.  Computers and cell phones couldn’t even connect to it.  The couple times I DID get the computer to connect download speeds were in the .5 Mb/s (not 5, .5)…

We COULD, in theory, be in some kind of dead zone, but I’m getting different answers from different tools.  Cellmapper insists I’m using the tower across the river (East), which is at MOST ¼ mile away.  And we’re slightly uphill from downtown, so it should be seeing us perfectly.  Network Call Info Lite (NCIL) says we’re using a tower straight South that’s about 5 or 6 blocks - maximum ½ mile.  OR, about 7:30 it started saying we’re using a tower that’s less than 2 blocks - literally down the street.  We have clear line of sight to all of them.

This morning, using the speed test in NCIL, from the cell phone I got about 16 Mb/s.  Using the wifi into the home Internet I got about 9.  And in the last 20 minutes that’s dropped to about FIVE Mb/s.

On the other hand, if I switch OFF 5G on the cell phone and do a speed test, I consistently get between 35 and 50 Mb/s, but I have no idea if the Home Internet is smart enough to switch OUT of 5G or if it even can.

At THIS moment (08:15), I had to reconnect to the home internet.  Apparently the connection dropped and one of the other data lines took over.  BUT, when I reconnected and ran speed test on the computer, I got 60 Mb/s download.  If it would do that all the time, I’d be happy.  AND from the cell into the home internet I got 48-60 Mb/s.  And the cell by itself just showed 250 Mb/s.

Since I’ve been messing with all this for 2 hours, I can absolutely say I was NOT seeing anything like this before just after 8 a.m.  I WAS seeing the numbers above - maybe 16 on the phone, about 9 dropping to around 5 on the Home Internet.

What the heck is going on?  Just went out and did the same thing with my wife’s computer and cell phone.  She’s getting around 60 Mb/s from the home Internet and 270 from her cell… 

And is it going to go back to garbage at 8:30 or 9 a.m. when people start doing whatever?

iTinkeralot
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +8

The behavior you are seeing could very well be due to T-Mobile engineers working on the 5G cells. When they are doing so I have seen the disruptions go on for 3-5 days and then once it is set it usually is improved. 

T
Badge

Wasn’t a miracle.  By 8:50 it’s back down to 5 Mb/s

 

iTinkeralot
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +8

The up/down behavior does seem to fit the profile for when they are working on the equipment. If the cellular equipment that was in that location was Sprint they could be replacing the older gear with newer gear and the disruptions as such are quite common actually. Unfortunately that seems to be how things happen with the rapid expansion of the 5G rollout. In some locations the expansion with existing towers has been completed and in other they continue to push out more coverage. We are in a rural area in east TN with a pasture behind the house and rolling hills as we are in the ridge and valley zone just west of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Even the cows could have connectivity here.

They really might be still tuning things up. It is worth a call. If you get with a level 1 engineer that just needs to meet the 5 minute call target you might not get the answers you need but if you get with a good level 2 engineer you might actually get some reasonable answers. I had to push for answers with a customer retention expert once and well, that has some advantages. You have to work the system. If Verizion or another carrier in the area is hungry for subscribers letting them know you are considering other options is a reasonable approach. Sometimes we just have to push to get answers and not be put off.

 

S
Badge

New home internet and T-Mobile customer here in general.  We’ve tried it out for over a week now and we can’t stream TV on this.  The screen freezes constantly.   I unfortunately don’t think the internet will work out for us, luckily I didn’t cancel my other internet provider yet.  Frustrating, since I am now paying for 2 services.  I was hoping to get around to calling the internet customer service line and have them try to troubleshoot, as I’ve done many speedtests and they are all over the place.  The most I’ve gotten was 30+, lowest around 2.  That is not good! 

iTinkeralot
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +8

If service is really weak like that it could be your location is just not optimal for signal reception or they are still doing upgrades and deployments in the area and coverage is still spotty. It would be worth the call to get more information about coverage in the area. If you have to drop the T-Mobile service for now you are still in the trial period so you should get your money back upon returning the gateway.

iTinkeralot
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +8

Cell Mapper uses ads to fund the service or there is a subscription for $3 CAD/month. If you “Agree” to the terms for the cookies it will allow you to use it but you have to put up with the ads. Once you figure it out it is not any worse than any other. I am on a MacBook Pro and I have cellmapper.net up on Chrome and on Safari. I find i works better on Safari as Chrome tends to not work with the location well. I have not bothered to work that out on Chrome as Safari works fine. When I launch Chrome it always puts me out in the Atlantic off the coast of Africa. I must be at the beach in the Canary Islands or something. So, anyway it is in part the blocking by Chrome and Firefox. With Safari I have no major issue using the site even without a subscription.

T
Badge

I can’t say they’re NOT doing maintenance.  But at 7 to after 9 pm on Sunday night? 

I got through to T-Mobile and one of the people had me do a couple things I’d already done a bunch of times.  Then she told me “they’re doing maintenance on a tower in that area”.  I suspect they’re ALWAYS doing maintenance on some tower in that area, but my experience with Visible (Verizon) has left me a bit cynical.

Stopped at the T-Mobile store, where they checked and told me the maintenance was ONLY ON 3G and should have NO effect on 5G.  So who’s right?

In the end, the ONLY thing T-Mobile came up with was “when the home internet slows down or stops, reboot it”.

Which sounds a LOT like Visible support, only faster ‘cause it’s on the phone instead of “chat”.

The store used a different program to access the home internet box, made some changes and did something with the sim, and confirmed which tower the unit would be using.  With that, since I know the tower is to the East, I tried all over the upstairs, including sitting in the farthest East-facing window, so you can look over at the tower about ¼ mile away.  No difference no matter where I put it.  Gets maybe 30 or Mb/s and that’s about it.

Cell phones were consistently 200+ Mb/s this morning.  Now they’re at about 30 also.

We’ll see if things improve.  Fortunately, we’ve got 15 days to take the Home Internet back and we’re on day 3.

Sherski311, I feel your pain.  I THINK we can stream TV.  We were yesterday until there was ZERO bandwidth available about 7 pm.  T-Mobile support ASSURED me that was “from the ongoing maintenance”. 

Speeds here bounce all over the place too, but I’ve got you beat on the low end…  We’ve been below ONE Mb/s.

 

As for my service being “weak”.  What constitutes weak on the cell phone?  Using Network Cell Info Lite on the phone, I have RSRP dBm of -86 – well into the green.  RSRQ, dB is -9.  RSSNR, db is 15.  The map says I’m talking to a tower about a half mile to my south.  Speed earlier this morning was over 200 Mb/s.  Right now it’s 17 Mb/s with a max of about 30.

With the cell phone connected to the home internet, Network Cell Info gives me , on the top gauge display, RSRP dBm of -83 on the “serving Cell”, which is “5G(NSA) T-Mobile”, -10 RSRQ, dB, RSSNR 15.  The bottom display appears to be the Home Internet network and RSRP is -96 to -102, so at the edge of yellow, -20 RSRQ db, and 44 to 52 for ASU.  Unfortunately, other than the RSRP dBm, with has red, yellow and green, I don’t know if the other numbers are good or bad.

At the moment the Home Internet is sitting IN the window, aimed straight at the tower it’s supposedly using.  I was told at the T-Mobile store that you actually want the right rear corner pointed at the tower as you’re facing the unit (the screen being the front).  I’ve tried it with the front facing the tower and the right rear.  Made no difference.

At the moment, performance is mediocre at best, but it’s as good as the DSL, which is more expensive, so it’s PROBABLY good enough to keep if it doesn’t get any worse, or quit completely again.  But, at the moment, having had sort-of Verizon when on Visible, T-Mobile is about as good as they were.  The only difference I can see so far is you get a person on the phone to tell you why you’re getting poor service instead of having to “chat”…

As far as cellmapper, I can’t run it on ANY of my Windows browsers.  It persists in telling me I’ve got an ad blocker running no matter what I do.  So it’s on the cell phone.

T
Badge

The fun continues… 

Last evening, with the box in the East facing window upstairs, we both lost connection repeatedly.  But, by the time I could get upstairs, it was always up, so I didn’t know if it was crashing or just having some kind of fit. 

Today, I brought it down and put it in the middle of the house.  Doesn’t seem to make a BIT of difference WHERE it is as far as speed.

Worked fine this morning.  This afternoon, at 3:30, we both lost our connection.  And again at 4:35, then at 5:27.  At 4:35 and 5:27 I got to the box quickly enough to SEE it saying “Powering Up”.  Called the T-Mobile store and they had me come over to swap the box.

I started running a monitor this morning, and having it check the downloads every 15 minutes for several hours.  Here’s the chart/graph:

It ran from about 6 a.m. to about 1:45 this afternoon.  Load was extremely light - NO TVs, very little activity from either computer (mine was the ONLY one on the Home Internet.  Wife went back to the DSL.

Started at 100 Mbps, Fell drastically by 10 a.m., continued down from there.

I’m going to try to get it to monitor at least 24 hours to see what it shows.  And note the time either of us gets disconnected.

 

iTinkeralot
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +8

Some of the Sagemcon gateways have experienced power related issues where they start doing a reboot rather frequently. Some users have gone through multiple gateways trying to find one that does not have the problem. That would be very frustrating and a huge waste of time. I am just not impressed with the more recent gateways. Only having the mobile application to manage the gateway is a huge negative for me. 

With the speed only peaking out around 100 Mbs and then being up/down and continuing to fall on average over time it seems like there is possibly an over subscription for the cell. If you are in an urban area and there are lots of subscribers hitting the same cells it is probably due to bandwidth throttling. The cell phones on the same cells do get priority over the fixed broadband 5G gateways so the fact that the phones get more bandwidth seems to fit the profile for throttling. If they would avoid over loading the cells and provisioning better it would be great but for some reason it does not appear they will take a more protective approach to bandwidth distribution. 

P
Userlevel 3
Badge +2

Speed dropped in half compared to last week.  My guess is lots of new sign-ups.

T
Badge

I don’t think here would qualify as urban - town is about 20,000 people. 

Is the “Sagemcon gateway” the black box that says “FAST 5688W” that’s on the shelf next to me?  If so, what’s the alternative for home Internet on T-Mobile that WILL work? 

I have to admit, so far T-Mobile seriously hasn’t covered themselves in glory.  The Home Internet is slow, the cell phones aren’t bad, though on 5G they’re USUALLY not much, if any, faster than the HI.  Though, when they switch to LTE or I switch them out of 5G they’re between 5X and 10X faster than the 5G.

Unfortunately, according to the T-Mobile store, I CANNOT do the same thing with the Gateway - change it so it DOESN’T use 5G and uses LTE instead. 

Anyhow the monitor is running, so I’ll see what it looks like in the morning - I suspect it runs adequately around 2 a.m.

iTinkeralot
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +8

They do have the 4G - TM-RTL0102 LTE WiFi Gateway 

The one advantage it has over the Arcadyan or Sagemcon is that it does have a web GUI driven management interface. The RTL0102 does share that characteristic that the Nokia 5G gateway has. 

If the 5G is not working you might get them to provide one of the 4G LTE Gateways just to see the difference. It actually might work out in the location where you are until they get the 5G proper. Talking to a customer retention specialists is probably the way to move on that if you do.

https://www.t-mobile.com/support/public-files/images/devices/manual/T-Mobile%20LTE%20Wi-Fi%20Gateway%20User%20Guide.pdf

T
Badge

Seems worth looking at, if possible.

I’ve tried to find anything online about deactivating 5G in the FAST 5688W, but haven’t found anything.

Another open, though one I wouldn’t try since it would void the warranty, would be to open the unit and disconnect the 5G antenna - I presume that would get it to use LTE, but don’t know for sure.

pphw, as far as the speed drop, I don’t know.  I didn’t get the box ‘til Saturday night, so I don’t know what it was like before Sunday, which was dreadful, but MAY have been partially caused by the box rebooting frequently…

Here’s the chart and the numbers for the last 14 hours:

 

Starting shortly after 7 pm last evening when I started the monitor, it fell into the toilet (take a look at the numbers below), and didn’t even get to the dismal point til around 11:30 pm.  Then it stayed lousy ALL NIGHT…  What would be causing it to be so wretched overnight when there CAN’T be that many people playing Fortnite or streaming porn?  Then SUDDENLY between 5:30 and 6 a.m. it jumps to better… And starts sliding back down, but at 9 a.m. it’s still at 50, which is at least usable…  The monitor is still running so I should have something for at least 24 hours.  Any thoughts?

 

iTinkeralot
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +8

You have the replacement Sagemcon but the signal degradation in the middle of the night is still pretty abysmal. It is hard to say. I have seen users go from one Sagemcon to another then another and then another looking for one that does not have the power/rebooting issue. I am not sure what that is all about as we will never know. I did have a conversation in the community with another user that had the 5G gateway and it was having much the same behavior with respect to signal being unpredictable. He had the conversation with T-Mobile about the 4G vs the 5G and they provided the 4G gateway I sent you the information on. His 4G was better and more consistent than the 5G and he was offered the option to return to the 5G gateway after the upgrades were completed. 

That is still not to say there could still not be some disruptions with the 4G LTE as I know they have been converging the 4G and 5G over the same infrastructure. There was a recent article that suggested they have done that. Previously the two “solutions” were not on the converged cloud architecture. From what I can see my iPhone 12 Pro only obtains an IPv6 address. The home gateways obtain both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. T-Mobile does use the 464XLAT as their network is IPv6. I would guess the 4G LTE gateway would run both IPv4 and IPv6 with the 464XLAT commonly referred to as carrier grade NAT but it is actually translation of IPv4 to/over IPv6 and then back to IPv4. There does also seem to be some delivery via IPv6 and phones use the IPv6 for data delivery. If the services run native IPv6 it is actually a simpler way to get the job done. I know it looks more imposing but actually it is not.

Still I would say discuss the 4G LTE and ask to talk to a customer retention specialists. I once got to one  via the chat once I got past the chatbot. The initial chat agent was not but I was passed up the food chain. If they are concerned about customer retention they will talk with you. I think it would be a good concession. If they would allow you to sit on the 5G unit and send the 4G LTE gateway and have you just swap the SIM or send the 4G LTE with a SIM installed it would be a good way to examine the service delivery a little better. The one thing that still is concerning is that even if the 5G signal source was down the 4G LTE should do better than what was recorded. The 4G LTE has been around a long time and is mature. The behavior might still be due to the “converged” 4G/5G infrastructure. I found the article with a quick search. Is it working all over as intended? hum...

https://www.t-mobile.com/news/network/t-mobile-and-cisco-launch-worlds-largest-cloud-native-converged-core-gateway

T
Badge

I’ve got to stop at the local T-Mobile anyhow, so I’ll ask if they have any of the 4G units…  I’m also planning to give T-Mobile a call and see how cooperative they want to be…  Would they like some money for home Internet or none?  And a customer that says good things about them or not?  I’d have been more confident a few years ago, but VERY few companies seem to care at ALL about their reputations these days.  I guess they all figure there’s a dozen customers to replace every one that leaves.

A THIRD option my wife asked about…  In THEORY, my Netgear Nighthawk M1 is unlocked (long story, predecessor of Visible that went belly up).  If so, I could pull the SIM out of the other box and put it in there.  That’s a 4G device, and it has always worked really well on AT&T.  I ALSO have a MIMO antenna for it, so potentially it could work fine.

Unfortunately, I’m FAR from being an expert at any of this so I don’t know if I could even get the Nighthawk working with T-Mobile.

SO FAR, today, speeds are MOSTLY holding at around 40 Mbps on the 5688, but I’m starting to see numbers like 1.8 and .22 Mbps show up in some results.

iTinkeralot
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +8

I would guess you could try it and it would either work or not but should not hurt anything. Those Netgear Nighthawk M1 LTE routers had a pretty decent reputation. I would not be surprised if it didn’t work unless they only allow their gateways and do a check. Is the SIM the same size. I think that is a nano SIM as I recall? If the numbers are back to the flakey that is not a good sign. I seem to recall those at one point were also capable of coverage for the T-Mobile bands. That is one consideration of any modem is if it supports the frequency bands for the carrier.

It might be surprising if the store actually has the 4G LTE gateway on hand. Try to get an appointment before you go in. Save yourself time. You never know when a wave hits.

Reply


New badge winners

Show all badges
Terms & Conditions