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Home Internet Issues/Rant

  • 29 September 2021
  • 9 replies
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I’ve had T-Mobile home internet for about a six weeks. The first three weeks it was awesome. My speeds were between 20-70mbps. I live in a rural area and my land line DSL would top out at 10mbps on a good day. I kept my land line for two week overlapping my T-Mobile home internet to make sure there weren’t any issues, as I was skeptical it would work in my area. It did though and it worked great. SO after two weeks I canceled my DSL line (Big mistake!) After three weeks there was a complete (T-Mobile) cellular outage in my area. After that my Home internet won’t work during the day. At night from approximately 11PM-6:30AM (night time) it works fine usually at speeds above 50mbps. However after 6:30AM (sunrise) I get about 55kbps if I get anything at all. My phone also will also not work in 5G during these same hours. I’ve had to set all the phones in my house to 4G only so I can get any internet access at all. I’ve been calling into tech support everyday for the last two weeks with no help or progress at all. Every time I call the home internet support line I get someone from India with a script and vague excuses from daytime capacity to ongoing upgrades in my area. It takes three weeks to upgrade a cell phone tower? Now all of the devices in my house are out of data and being throttled because of my home internet not working. I haven’t been offered any compensation for my Home internet that NEVER works during the day. Me (an idiot) can narrow down the problem to the 5G not being able to process internet traffic between certain hours, and even if a speed test says I’m getting 15mbps during these times I’m dropping packets (Hardwired or Wi-Fi). I asked the T-Mobile home internet support team if they could force my router to only use only 4G until they’re able to figure out the issue with the 5G, Their solution was to try and disable my 5Ghz Wi-Fi band in the router, because they couldn’t or didn’t understand the difference between the 5th gen cellular data and the 5Ghz Wi-Fi band. After I spoke to someone else who did understand what I was talking about they told me they cannot and the router will do it automatically. The problem is that I have good 5G signal but it will only process 56kbps, so the router doesn’t use the 4G. I have been waiting three weeks and called tech support 6+ times with absolutely no progress being made.

 

 

 

9 replies

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First thank you for being honest and titling your post “Rant” at least you are upfront love it.

 

Also thanks for posting useful data about your setup.

 

I have been at this whole thing for countless weeks my wife says I have done my Phd in the TM can gateway.

Odd I have called tech many times I seem to get a french woman or a TX man but hit or miss some are good some know nothing.

Mostly I call to get tower data that they have in front of them so if they can read the screen I am good.

First if you don't know already most of the data on sites like Cellmapper are out of date and way off. I have made my own maps and details from calling tech.

I really have 3 towers that I seem to be able to pull from. A 5G n71 2 miles to the NW but highly obscured with a high spot in the land and warehouses. Even from my roof it's hard to get this one. Further speed testing of this tower near it shows max speeds or 250 and that’s right by the tower. There is a 4G B66 tower only .5 miles and near it max down is 130. There is another 5G tower 3 miles to the SW that is in the process of being upgraded. Though it is farther there is a low area between me and the tower so when it’s on I pick it up better. But not set to be finished and online 24/7 for a few more weeks. The dilemma is there is no single spot in my home that I can hit a combination of the towers to get both 4 and 5G. Where I have my can now I only get the 4G tower but it’s rock solid been up weeks no drops no issues but only 75ish down. Now when I get that tower to the SW oh man got 560 down testing yesterday. But very tiny spot in one window has the best shot of that tower and no shot at the 4G so that’s the rub. When the 5G drops since the tower is not finished I have no 4G as backup. Also I think it’s a good idea to have a backup anyway. So I have been testing places outside where I can grab a 4 and 5G tower and thinking of an external ant to put in that spot. I am also tempted to wait a few more weeks for the 5G tower to be online full time not just testing. But like I was saying I think I need a 4G (second tower) to fall back on.

 

To me your signal looks good way better then what I have I would think you would be getting good service. I think there is some logic bugs in the can when it has both signals it does not always do the right thing.

Have you tried turning the can for me so little of a turn makes a big diff in what I pick up. Do you know what towers are what bands in which direction?

I have even used aluminum foil to shield the can to try to influence what it picks up. Some ppl have used old sat dishes behind the can to reflect signal to the backside of the can.

 

I think you can find a solid spot in your home with the signal you have just a matter of finding it.

 

 

W

We have T-Mobile Home Internet for a few months now. The first weeks were great, so we gave up our AT&T, and right after that, things got bad. Random outages, independent of day and time. At first, restarting the unit gave us another day of internet, but then it started to happen more often. Now it’s really bad.

I did call Customer Service a lot, and every rep wastes a lot of time with the same scripts about how much they appreciate us - yeah, right - and then every rep has a different idea of what the problem is. So far I heard things like: upgrade of the service, network congestion, bad modem (maybe replace it), need to split up 2.4Mhz and 5.0Mhz WiFi network name, power outage at one of the towers, and now they started at the network upgrade story again. As far as I can see, the problem is outside our house, not with the modem. The placement of the modem is optimal, with most bars (3 bars is max), and most signal (bars are not a great measure). It’s just that the gateway connection to the internet is worthless. It often uses IP-addresses from another state, and we get commercials from 500 miles down the road.

In the beginning we had an average speed of 180 Mbps down, with peaks of 300 or even 400 Mbps, but these days it’s about 24 Mbps, if it works at all. Upload was initially around 15-20 Mbps, sometimes more, but now we get about 1-4 Mbps, if it works at all.

Not happy, since we work from home. This is not acceptable, and we’re about to leave this T-Mobile 5G experiment behind us. The pressure of the family is getting too high, for understandable reasons. We can’t do what we need to do, and T-Mobile is acting like it’s a toy we’re allowed to us. The last rep told me to “try again tomorrow”. Uhm,,,,

O

I cannot be shorter: the same issue on my side (Manhattan UES) and again no connection at all since yesterday afternoon. I had to cancel important zoom meetings, really a shame! I will not call T-mobile helpdesk this time since they will try to guide me through a long and useless procedure. I have this kind of issue every 4-5 weeks, which lasts for a few days.

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We have T-Mobile Home Internet for a few months now. The first weeks were great, so we gave up our AT&T, and right after that, things got bad. Random outages, independent of day and time. At first, restarting the unit gave us another day of internet, but then it started to happen more often. Now it’s really bad.

I did call Customer Service a lot, and every rep wastes a lot of time with the same scripts about how much they appreciate us - yeah, right - and then every rep has a different idea of what the problem is. So far I heard things like: upgrade of the service, network congestion, bad modem (maybe replace it), need to split up 2.4Mhz and 5.0Mhz WiFi network name, power outage at one of the towers, and now they started at the network upgrade story again. As far as I can see, the problem is outside our house, not with the modem. The placement of the modem is optimal, with most bars (3 bars is max), and most signal (bars are not a great measure). It’s just that the gateway connection to the internet is worthless. It often uses IP-addresses from another state, and we get commercials from 500 miles down the road.

In the beginning we had an average speed of 180 Mbps down, with peaks of 300 or even 400 Mbps, but these days it’s about 24 Mbps, if it works at all. Upload was initially around 15-20 Mbps, sometimes more, but now we get about 1-4 Mbps, if it works at all.

Not happy, since we work from home. This is not acceptable, and we’re about to leave this T-Mobile 5G experiment behind us. The pressure of the family is getting too high, for understandable reasons. We can’t do what we need to do, and T-Mobile is acting like it’s a toy we’re allowed to us. The last rep told me to “try again tomorrow”. Uhm,,,,

 

If you look around here you will find many of us trying many things to get things stable. There is a lot you can do to get a solid setup. Should you have to no if this was a perfect world you would just plug in turn on and it would work like a champ day in day out. But that’s not the real world and this is a wireless connection so can be finicky you know just like your cell phone.

IMO this is at this time cutting edge tech and probably not for everyone. Sure there are those is great location that it just works but many of us that is not the case. We are installing cooling fans making mods installing ext ant many things to get it working. I work from home so does the wife kids and mom are streaming 4k all day we have managed to get our can 75ish down rock solid. Took lots of time and investigation on my part. I am still going on field trips taking reading on towers making notes trying new angles all to see if I can get more speed and also stable.

 

In my area Comcast has the exclusive contract so they are our only choice and I am sick of them with data caps, increasing prices, deals that go away, just sick of it. So with TM being now my only other option and reasonable I am trying to make it work as I just cannot go back to Comcast.

 

 

W

I actually have a background in Telecom technology, @007BondMI6, so, yeah I am well aware of the technical challenges. When it’s working, the technology is cutting edge, otherwise it’s just expensive, organized dirt. However, based on my observations, the issue might not be with the technology, but more a lack of capacity planning and missing timeslots. Traffic routing through another state is not the best way to do things if that’s your way of balancing the demand.

Like you, @007BondMI6 , I was sick of the old provider, and T-Mobile sounded promising. It took me a while to get the even the billing process straightened out, because T-Mobile (phone) and T-Mobile (Home Internet) were separate entities, trying to use the same tools. But I had the same problem with my old (big name) provider, so I can’t blame them, and after I got the people communicating, it’s working fine now. They were just not ready for prime time.

The thing that got me writing this post was the flippant remark from the rep to just try using the service again in 24 hours. It’s not a toy. If they think it’s not ready for showtime, then they should offer it for free for us to test, so we can keep the old provider in place for a little longer.

And, oh yeah, @OXG, keep calling the helpdesk, and inform them that you will not jump through their useless troubleshoot hoops again, because you just did (I was able.to get past that waste of time a few times already). They need to know about the problems. And, interestingly enough, after calling our connection does work well for at least close to a day, before it starts fading again. So they know how to make things work…. that is nice, and it makes you angry at the same time.

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@whois101 

Agreed it’s more like we are Beta testers as I don't think the logic in the gateway is fully baked yet and IMO they need more user feedback imput to get things improved before prime time.

 

Seems the farther 5G tower from me got a huge upgrade test with my phone are looking good 650 down and 100 up. Issue I have is this tower is 3 miles to the SW and I only get those speeds in one window. So it’s like a sweet spot for that tower but issue is I cannot get the 4G tower reliable from that window so if the 5G drops I am dead no fall back to 4G. This is the reason I ordered the outside ant I can place it outside that window aim it between the SW 5G and the W 4G and testing with phone shows promise. Currently the can is in a W window where it sees the W 4G tower very well and stays locked like a rock on it. But from there it cannot see the 5G to the SW or the closer 2 miles away 5G tower to the NW. Also the 5G to the NW has not been upgraded so max speeds near the tower are just over 200.

 

My best hope is to be able to get onto the SW upgraded 5G tower with the W 4G tower as the prime but seems I will need an outside ant to get into a position to do this. Also hoping for a 10db gain from the ext ant so that will put me -90 for both towers.

I have not moved my can to the S window because the fast 5G signal disappears at times. I found out that is from the tower upgrade that is still not scheduled to be completed for 2 more weeks.

But I really do feel like a Beta tester but I am paying full price for the privilege.

I feel TM should pick some users as tester this would improve the product we could test new FW and give feedback.

 

O

Since Tuesday, the connection issue in my apartment is still not solved: no Home-WIFI and no mobile phone signal. This means not getting or making calls (I do not have a landline), no access to the internet, no TV, no virtual meetings … I believe they are working on a tower, but how it comes that we are not informed in advance. They must know who is in general connected to a tower and could send a warning text or email.

T

I actually have a background in Telecom technology, @007BondMI6, so, yeah I am well aware of the technical challenges. When it’s working, the technology is cutting edge, otherwise it’s just expensive, organized dirt. However, based on my observations, the issue might not be with the technology, but more a lack of capacity planning and missing timeslots. Traffic routing through another state is not the best way to do things if that’s your way of balancing the demand.

Like you, @007BondMI6 , I was sick of the old provider, and T-Mobile sounded promising. It took me a while to get the even the billing process straightened out, because T-Mobile (phone) and T-Mobile (Home Internet) were separate entities, trying to use the same tools. But I had the same problem with my old (big name) provider, so I can’t blame them, and after I got the people communicating, it’s working fine now. They were just not ready for prime time.

The thing that got me writing this post was the flippant remark from the rep to just try using the service again in 24 hours. It’s not a toy. If they think it’s not ready for showtime, then they should offer it for free for us to test, so we can keep the old provider in place for a little longer.

And, oh yeah, @OXG, keep calling the helpdesk, and inform them that you will not jump through their useless troubleshoot hoops again, because you just did (I was able.to get past that waste of time a few times already). They need to know about the problems. And, interestingly enough, after calling our connection does work well for at least close to a day, before it starts fading again. So they know how to make things work…. that is nice, and it makes you angry at the same time.

Same song, second verse…or third or fourth or whatever!! Had good service initially, did away with original carrier and home line, now extremely slow..download 6 or less. Tv buffers constantly. Customer service, after an hour on the phone , improved it to 24.. less than 24 hours later, back down to less than 6 download. I live rural so not a lot of options, but I’m going to research and see what I can get..even if it means paying more! This is ridiculous!! 

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Works different for all of us for me its only gotten more stable and faster.

Let me look OK my can has been up for 18 days not a single issue just high speed internet. Now before that it was up for several weeks I just unplug it to install a real UPS. Speed is now pushing 800 down 140 up so keeps getting better.

In fact TMHI is more stable and dependable than Comcast ever was.

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