Question

Home internet speeds extremely inconsistent and connection drops intermittently

  • 12 March 2021
  • 41 replies
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E
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I got our T-Mobile Home Internet yesterday. I have 4 bars and T-Mobile tells me I have a good 5G signal. The download speeds have varied from 0.1 Mbps to 25 Mbps, and upload speeds of 8.0 to 20 Mbps. I’ve turned off everything electrical in the area with no gain in speed.

I live on two very busy roads, US-93 it’s the road to Las Vegas, and Pierce Ferry Rd the road to the Grand Canyon West. I don’t know if T-Mobile adjusted for thousands of cars and ten 40 passenger tour buses full of people all sending video back home. If you look at Dolan Springs Arizona you’ll see we’re in the boonies so cell towers are few and far between. 

So tired of Frontiers 2-5Mbps speeds...

N

Same sort of issue here. Got the modem 4 weeks ago,  I get 250+ for a week, then < 20 the next week. Basically alternates about every week or so.  Called customer service about 6 times.  getting annoying.  Not sure what their engineers are doing.

S

I received my home internet 2 days ago and I have a gamer at home who uses it constantly. Well the connected LAN was only giving us <10 and it was connected directly! I called in and I live  in Florida so they informed me that they are working on the towers that are close by me. So I have to wait 2-3 days. I am hoping this works out I work from home and Comcast is expensive and network is lagging so much here if I want a good deal I have to resign a 2-yr agreement with them and I honestly don’t want to as I can’t even only get internet I HAVE to get TV and cable in order for my bill to go down. I will update in a few days to see if our internet is doing better with T-mobile. My boyfriend and I are really trying to be positive about the issue with the inconsistency of the speed and believing it can be the “fixing issue” they are doing 

G
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I am having similar issues with my Home Internet.  Download speeds jump anywhere between 15-70Mbps, but Upload speeds are consistently below 1Mbps.  I also experience 10+ disconnections per day, about a third of those requiring a manual reboot to the 5G gateway.

D
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just a rant here and some info, have had home internet for about 2 weeks. Started at steady 100 mbps speeds up to about 120, was thrilled. Today stuck at 10 mbps and under all morning. If this continues I will dump them. I rebooted the router 5 times no luck. My phone was getting much higher reading 30mbps-100 mbps so congestion and priority are an issue. Customer service is horrible and a giant run around game. They cannot fix simply billing and account issues and just straight up lie to get you off the phone and end the call. Hate xfinity but considering them at this point as the cost is higher but in theory up to 400 mbps so might be my only option left. Ok sorry for rant, in Ann Arbor Mich. here. Clearly they have oversold and rolled out too aggressively and now congestion is a big problem. Greed.

B
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It sure is consistent in lost connectivity, almost identical,  not like any isp used before.  Finding someone to send such graphs too is impossible, service relies on community instead of paying service techs, guess get what you pay for at 60 a month.

 

T

We jumped on home internet service as soon as we heard about it. For a long time now, Comcast has been the only choice in Baltimore City and it feels like they squeeze city residents to subsidize lower prices for their customers in the counties where they have competition. Our current Comcast bill is just over $100 per month with their most basic service, a bundled Internet + TV. We don’t even use the TV service but they wouldn’t give us a plan with just internet service. This costs us about $110/month. I can plug my brother’s address (he has  VZ Fios) in on the Comcast website and get offers for $39.99/month. I’ve been looking for a way to break free of Comcast for years now so I want to love this service but it’s just not measuring up.

We had one of the mobile internet gateways delivered on 3/9. I started testing it immediately and was consistently getting speeds well over 300Mbps down on the first floor of my house. I even hit above 400Mbps a few times. So I went ahead and put that gateway at the head of the network, replacing the cable modem. The good speeds continued for a bit but, not long after that, I noticed the gateway would intermittently lose it’s connection and the speed had dropped quite a bit. I’ve seen as low as 3Mbps down but that it generally stayed at just about 25Mbps. Checking the LCD at the top of the router, I could see that it was disconnected when our internet stopped working or that I had between 2-3 bars. I have 2 kids in school zoom meetings from 9am - 3:30pm and my wife and I are in and out of zoom meetings from 9am - 5pm. We were constantly getting disconnected due to the internet going down completely or due to the DSL speeds I haven’t seen since 2005. WiFi in my house is problematic due to plaster walls and metal lath so I figured it had something to do with that.

I went to https://www.cellmapper.net/ and found the closest T-Mobile 5g tower was about 3.25 miles away. Luckily, my house is in one of the highest areas of the city and my 2nd floor bedroom window faces the nearest towers with a fairly unobstructed path to them. I drilled some holes and ran an ethernet cable down to the living room router. At this point, the gateway was sitting just far back enough from my bedroom window to avoid direct sunlight and had a pretty clear path to the closest tower. The display showed 4 bars consistently. However, the speed and connectivity issues persisted.

I just got off the phone with T-Mobile Home Internet tech support and got a line that seems a little too much of a coincidence when you take into account the other coincidences. The support rep asked me if I experienced this trouble before 3/9 because their engineers just started working on the tower I was connected to on 3/9 and it explains my trouble. I’m willing to wait for this work to be completed but he said it could take up to a month.

So these are the coincidences so far:

  1. Most of the time, I get right around 25Mbps. It happens enough that the support rep was able to ask me to retry a speed test immediately after getting a <10Mbps speed test back and it would be >25Mbps. Then he’d say, “There you go. I made an adjustment and now you’re getting 25Mbps, which is the base speed”. The speed issue seems more like throttling since it’s keeping me right at 25Mbps most of the time.
  2. The problem I’m seeing started on the day I received the equipment and just happens to be affecting the only tower my gateway is connecting to.
  3. The work their engineers are doing could take up to a month. Just enough time for them to charge me for another month before I cancel.

Maybe this is just paranoid me talking but I’m not trusting some of what I was told. I’d love to be wrong about this though. Anyone had a similar experience? Was it eventually fixed? How long did that take? My whole neighborhood is waiting to hear how this pans out. So many people are sick to death of Comcast that they may have to abandon Baltimore altogether once most of us jump ship for T-Mobile.

Rant over but I’d love to hear from people who’ve had similar experiences or who may have advice for improving my service.

Thanks,

Matt

I started using this service in January and have been told that upgrades were in process and have been completed. Then every time I call they have issues with my two close towers. I did have a window from March 10-14 with speeds of 50-122 here in Minneapolis. That was the best I’ve seen here. Strangely about noon on 3/14 my speeds dropped below 20 and have stayed between 2-20 since then. Something does not add up. I’m ready to pull the plug.

G

Something everyone needs to remember about their home internet:

 

It is the lowest priority in the queue.

 

Which means in times of high utilization , your packets will be some of the last ones to get through the buffers.

 

No idea what that utilization threshold is... could be 80%, 70%, 60%... whatever value they feel is appropriate to secure faster throughput for the phone users over the home internet devices.

 

May want to pay attention to a few details at the speedtest site:

 

It doesn't happen often, but sometimes it will home in on a location out in left field because of where Tmobile has routed the 464 tunnel they are using.  Not kidding, it has dumped me in Kansas as my best/closest test location--I live roughly 70 miles inland from Myrtle Beach, SC.  It pays to use the Change Server link to consistently pick the same site every time.... may find you need to reboot the unit to try to secure better pathing.

 

Also keep an eye on the latency/jitter numbers it reports.  Jitter is an indicator of how much each subsequent ping is varying.  When these numbers ramp up for the same test site, it is an indicator your packets are getting held in the queue longer and longer... an indication that either your tower or elsewhere along the route is getting congested.  Again, you may be able to remedy that somewhat with a reboot.  I find relocating it first helps a lot (I have 4 TMobile antennas nearby and distance to them all are within about 1/2 mile difference, so I can almost literally "point" it differently to switch bands/towers sometimes).

 

If you haven't yet, may want to get the Tmobile Home Internet app for your smartphone.  They  have two apps--one is specifically for monitoring/managing your home internet router, the other is for generic account stuff.  The app has a "more" section that will give you stats on the connection, as well as a quick restart option.  You can make a note of which position/angle puts you on which antenna (CID) as well as which band is in play, along with signal strength and overall quality (CQI), and how it all coordinates with your throughput/latency.  This may help you narrow down a couple positions to move the device to for optimizing things during the more troubled times.

For example, I have settled on my default location as just above my bedroom TV, kinda in front of a window.  Alternet locations for other bands are on top of my PC monitor to the right along an adjacent outside wall pointing towards another tower, or two spots on a dresser to the left on the other side of the same double window where I can "aim" it towards two other towers.

I have the same issues. My TV is always buffering constantly even on my phone is buffering and I can't sign into the home internet app it's always telling me to reset it and it's not connected and I have the wrong password constantly telling me I have the wrong password but I don't have the proper password.

My HP stream top will not find the T-Mobile internet either I've called T-Mobile and it is much troubleshooting as I could and I went through my computer and checked all the settings and tried changing things around and it will not find tmobile but it finds every other network around here including my old network.

M
Userlevel 2
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Well things are looking up. I had a laptop connected to the T-Mobile gateway running a speed test every 5 minutes and dumping the results to a csv file. The issue seems to have been resolved yesterday so I’ve connected the home network to the gateway and we’re all giving it a shot today. So far, no disconnections and we have 3 simultaneous video calls happening. Perhaps there was just a problem with one of the towers.

 

 

S

We jumped on home internet service as soon as we heard about it. For a long time now, Comcast has been the only choice in Baltimore City and it feels like they squeeze city residents to subsidize lower prices for their customers in the counties where they have competition. Our current Comcast bill is just over $100 per month with their most basic service, a bundled Internet + TV. We don’t even use the TV service but they wouldn’t give us a plan with just internet service. This costs us about $110/month. I can plug my brother’s address (he has  VZ Fios) in on the Comcast website and get offers for $39.99/month. I’ve been looking for a way to break free of Comcast for years now so I want to love this service but it’s just not measuring up.

We had one of the mobile internet gateways delivered on 3/9. I started testing it immediately and was consistently getting speeds well over 300Mbps down on the first floor of my house. I even hit above 400Mbps a few times. So I went ahead and put that gateway at the head of the network, replacing the cable modem. The good speeds continued for a bit but, not long after that, I noticed the gateway would intermittently lose it’s connection and the speed had dropped quite a bit. I’ve seen as low as 3Mbps down but that it generally stayed at just about 25Mbps. Checking the LCD at the top of the router, I could see that it was disconnected when our internet stopped working or that I had between 2-3 bars. I have 2 kids in school zoom meetings from 9am - 3:30pm and my wife and I are in and out of zoom meetings from 9am - 5pm. We were constantly getting disconnected due to the internet going down completely or due to the DSL speeds I haven’t seen since 2005. WiFi in my house is problematic due to plaster walls and metal lath so I figured it had something to do with that.

I went to https://www.cellmapper.net/ and found the closest T-Mobile 5g tower was about 3.25 miles away. Luckily, my house is in one of the highest areas of the city and my 2nd floor bedroom window faces the nearest towers with a fairly unobstructed path to them. I drilled some holes and ran an ethernet cable down to the living room router. At this point, the gateway was sitting just far back enough from my bedroom window to avoid direct sunlight and had a pretty clear path to the closest tower. The display showed 4 bars consistently. However, the speed and connectivity issues persisted.

I just got off the phone with T-Mobile Home Internet tech support and got a line that seems a little too much of a coincidence when you take into account the other coincidences. The support rep asked me if I experienced this trouble before 3/9 because their engineers just started working on the tower I was connected to on 3/9 and it explains my trouble. I’m willing to wait for this work to be completed but he said it could take up to a month.

So these are the coincidences so far:

  1. Most of the time, I get right around 25Mbps. It happens enough that the support rep was able to ask me to retry a speed test immediately after getting a <10Mbps speed test back and it would be >25Mbps. Then he’d say, “There you go. I made an adjustment and now you’re getting 25Mbps, which is the base speed”. The speed issue seems more like throttling since it’s keeping me right at 25Mbps most of the time.
  2. The problem I’m seeing started on the day I received the equipment and just happens to be affecting the only tower my gateway is connecting to.
  3. The work their engineers are doing could take up to a month. Just enough time for them to charge me for another month before I cancel.

Maybe this is just paranoid me talking but I’m not trusting some of what I was told. I’d love to be wrong about this though. Anyone had a similar experience? Was it eventually fixed? How long did that take? My whole neighborhood is waiting to hear how this pans out. So many people are sick to death of Comcast that they may have to abandon Baltimore altogether once most of us jump ship for T-Mobile.

Rant over but I’d love to hear from people who’ve had similar experiences or who may have advice for improving my service.

Thanks,

Matt

We just moved from Cox to T-Mobile Internet and it's horrendously slow. Can't even do a Zoom call without constant freezes and intermittent disconnections. Called support 3 times, on hold for more than 30 minutes, and each time they promise to call back. Still waiting...

T

I have been incredibly disappointed with the download speeds. For the first few days, it was great, staying consistently between 50-70 Mbps (which I’m lucky to get in my area). Lately, I’m lucky to get 10 Mbps, and more often than not it’s down to 3 Mbps which is practically unusable. I am getting extremely frustrated.

Home Internet should be prioritized. I depend on this for both my jobs, and was promised “broadband speeds” which should be AT LEAST 25 Mbps. So far, that has not been delivered.

M
Userlevel 2
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This is what I have so far since setting up the speed test at 15 minute intervals. Points with no data are times when the service has been down. It’s actually been down much more often than this but that isn’t caught unless the downtime coincides with 0, 15, 30, or 45 minutes each hour.

 

Hopefully this all goes away when the problem with the tower is fixed becaus.e helping my 6 year old get back in his zoom meeting 1-2 times an hour isn’t sustainable

M
Userlevel 2
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My IP geolocates to Boston MA for some reason. Speedtest.net constantly routes me to servers in MA. I’ve submitted a request to have the geoIP data corrected at https://support.maxmind.com/geoip-data-correction-request/ but it takes a while to make the change and I get a new IP often enough that I doubt I’ll still have it by the time it’s changed, if it’s changed at all. So, for now, I have a cron job running a speedtest every 15 minutes and dumping the results to a .csv file that I can use to plot my speed results after a few days.

D
Userlevel 5
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Something everyone needs to remember about their home internet:

 

It is the lowest priority in the queue.

 

Which means in times of high utilization , your packets will be some of the last ones to get through the buffers.

 

No idea what that utilization threshold is... could be 80%, 70%, 60%... whatever value they feel is appropriate to secure faster throughput for the phone users over the home internet devices.

 

May want to pay attention to a few details at the speedtest site:

 

It doesn't happen often, but sometimes it will home in on a location out in left field because of where Tmobile has routed the 464 tunnel they are using.  Not kidding, it has dumped me in Kansas as my best/closest test location--I live roughly 70 miles inland from Myrtle Beach, SC.  It pays to use the Change Server link to consistently pick the same site every time.... may find you need to reboot the unit to try to secure better pathing.

 

Also keep an eye on the latency/jitter numbers it reports.  Jitter is an indicator of how much each subsequent ping is varying.  When these numbers ramp up for the same test site, it is an indicator your packets are getting held in the queue longer and longer... an indication that either your tower or elsewhere along the route is getting congested.  Again, you may be able to remedy that somewhat with a reboot.  I find relocating it first helps a lot (I have 4 TMobile antennas nearby and distance to them all are within about 1/2 mile difference, so I can almost literally "point" it differently to switch bands/towers sometimes).

 

If you haven't yet, may want to get the Tmobile Home Internet app for your smartphone.  They  have two apps--one is specifically for monitoring/managing your home internet router, the other is for generic account stuff.  The app has a "more" section that will give you stats on the connection, as well as a quick restart option.  You can make a note of which position/angle puts you on which antenna (CID) as well as which band is in play, along with signal strength and overall quality (CQI), and how it all coordinates with your throughput/latency.  This may help you narrow down a couple positions to move the device to for optimizing things during the more troubled times.

For example, I have settled on my default location as just above my bedroom TV, kinda in front of a window.  Alternet locations for other bands are on top of my PC monitor to the right along an adjacent outside wall pointing towards another tower, or two spots on a dresser to the left on the other side of the same double window where I can "aim" it towards two other towers.

M
Userlevel 2
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The one thing I can rely on is hitting almost spot on 25Mbps every few tests.

I’m going to have to setup a speed test monitor to record test results every 10 minutes over the next week and plot the results.

M
Userlevel 2
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Current situation

 

3/9 situation

 

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