T-Mobile Home Internet Review

  • 10 March 2021
  • 19 replies
  • 22697 views
P
Userlevel 2

I have been using T-Mobile Home Internet for a couple of months now. I recently upgraded to the 5G Gateway, which has made my WiFi much better Vs. the LTE Gateway which sucked and had a lot of restrictions. The 5G Gateway is sleek, easy to use, and comes included with your Home Internet Plan! My experience has been exemplary, apart from a few issues.

I have the following issues with T-Mobile Home Internet:

•No UPnP Option which causes issues using XBL. 
•No Port Forwarding which causes a Moderate NAT on XBL

•Some VPN applications do not work.

•The Online GUI is limited and watered down. T-Mobile should really fix these issues, as it’s bothering other Customers as well. Overall T-Mobile Home Internet is great for those who don’t play on XBL, PSN, or PC or require a VPN to be used for work or personal use.

I’m not a T-Mobile employee. I just answer questions that I might know the answer to.

19 replies

P
Userlevel 2

*EDIT* I meant to say “or DONT require a VPN for work or personal use.”

I’m not a T-Mobile employee. I just answer questions that I might know the answer to.
D

I use a VPN all of the time and I have had no issues with it other than a minor slow down in connection speeds, which is to be expected. I didn’t have to make any setting adjustments to make it work. The only thing that was needed from time to time, is that you might have to use specific VPN servers for certain applications or websites to work. But this is a common problem most have when using a VPN regardless of isp.

 

The only issue I had was with my voip phone modem. When connected directly to the gateway it had a tendency to drop calls. I then connected my old router to the gateway and then connected the voip modem to it and the problem went away.

J

I’m still waiting for T-Mobile to add Port Forwarding to this device. I returned the unit I bought and I cannot purchase this home internet service with the lack of Port Forwarding…

Are you listening T-Mobile…???

D
Userlevel 5
Badge +5

Unfortunately, it goes deeper than just allowing you to set forwarding rules in the router... be that manually or via UPnP.

Unsolicited inbound traffic is not properly passing through the forward facing layer.  It is a problem inherent to the 464XLAT approach they implememted to support dual IPv4 and IPv6 addressing.

Until they switch to a better method of managing IPv4 traffic through their IPv6 only network, there will be issues.

I have found a solution with one VPN provider, but the extra features to make it work would cost an extra $16/month--and that is at their best annual subscription rates (one year of static IP plus 2 years of VPN)  Windscribe is the only one that I have been able to confirm they have a strategy to do specifically what is needed to truly get around this mess.

One of the core issues is bound to the fact that the public IP you wind up with is not actually JUST your IP--it can still be shared with others using the same service.  So basically, you need to be securing that public IP for your use in order to forward ports properly.  This is what ramps up the cost at Windscribe.

Many offer P2P support through the paid side of their VPN services, but it only works partially... basically where you can use stateful inspection and such.  It gets around issues with BitTorrent and such... but does not necessarily work for unsolicited inbound connections, which can break some P2P communication with games--especially if that game is running on a console.

 

The TLDR:  until TMO restructures their core network topology for the service to more properly support dual-stack IPv4/v6, problems will persist regardless of what is going on with their modems.

J

Thank you for the detailed reply. That helps me better understand what is happening with their home internet gateway. I will try to be patient while they make their system more functional for all of us! :-)

 

R
Userlevel 2
Badge +1

I’m surprised that T-Mobile blocks inbound unsolicited IPv6 connections. Xfinity doesn’t have this restriction. If I’m not mistaken, that would go a long way in mitigating the port forwarding issues.

J

That’s interesting. I was not aware of the Xfinity service. Unfortunately they tell me their service is not available in my town!!!

N
Userlevel 1
Badge

The two biggest issues I have with the service are high latency and lack of capacity, and my metro area is >170k (and that’s being generous). A base 60ms that doubles, and not getting a consistent 50Mbps down and sometimes <1Mbps uploads and make not only competitive gaming painful, but multiple users online simultaneously a pain. And at $60/mo when Spectrum can guarantee 200Mbps down consistently for $100/mo, it’s just sad. Thing is, I’m patient and I know the service will be much better as buildout continues, but it was $50/mo a few weeks back and there’s already been a price hike (not for folks prior to the raise though). I’m actually a disappointed with this service at the moment though there are things I like about it. Just… they need more capacity in order to truly deliver the minimum 50Mbps. 

R
Userlevel 2
Badge +1

The two biggest issues I have with the service are high latency and lack of capacity, and my metro area is >170k (and that’s being generous). A base 60ms that doubles, and not getting a consistent 50Mbps down and sometimes <1Mbps uploads and make not only competitive gaming painful, but multiple users online simultaneously a pain. And at $60/mo when Spectrum can guarantee 200Mbps down consistently for $100/mo, i

100% agree with you. T-Mobile sent me a customer feedback questionnaire, and one of the questions was how I graded T-Mobile when it came to unexpected bill hikes. You can guess how I graded T-Mobile on this one.

N

Initially the service fit my needs - two tvs streaming and use of pc by both my wife and I.  For the last month T-Mobile has been working on upgrading the towers around us.  We can’t stream shows and the internet is at a snails pace.   If everytime TMobile wants to do an upgrade we suffer for at least a month, the service isn’t worth it.  I hate Optimum but we’re going to go back.

H

Hello. We have had constant issues with our T-Mobile Home Internet. We started with high hopes though were not sure what our benefits would be since we never get more than 2 bars on any of our other devices including some iPhones (8, XR, 12).  Our other devices don’t seem relevant for this comparison (computers) as they are not T-Mobile SIM provided. But the other four devices as mentioned have never had more than 2 bars of coverage since the 1990’s and often drop to 1 bar.

The reason this is relevant is that even our cell phones say we do not have T-Mobile Wi-Fi.

With our T-Mobile Internet, which we received a couple months ago with the new device people are mentioning, it also says it receives 2 bars. It sometimes goes to 1 bar (turning yellow) and we don't know if it sometimes goes below 1 or not as it shows 2 bars but we lose the wi-fi, on average, at east once. day. It has caused us to otherwise unnecessarily still have to pay for our (hope to be previous) internet provider since we need the internet service for work so are suffering with the poor T-Mobile Home Internet service, but really want to be able to keep it but need it to work.  We decided to write this since we had to go to our backup provider at least once each day last week, now again today. Ridiculous.

​​​​​​​A gentleman from T-Mobile said they had a technician check the tower that our service comes from and, after about a week of checking, it appears to be overloaded with users. Since T-Mobile supposedly limited people to be able to use the service to assure that would not happen, that does not make sense. We had tried the T-Mobile Home Internet in all locations and levels of our home to see if there was any better reception, as the instructions recommended.  Upstairs, main level, downstairs, rooms to the N, NE, NW, E SE S SW, W, near windows and not, everywhere but the roof (which it does not say to do since that is outside). So, location of the device in the house is not a factor.

So, we are not sure if the device is faulty and does not properly provide W-Fi?  The top can show 2 bars (well, not it just turned to 1 bar) and says it can detect devices, but none of the devices can get Wi-Fi.

Has anyone else had a similar problem?  Thank you for listening and for your help.

 

N
Badge

My experiance with the homeinternet had for 6 months calling weekly for 6 months adds up to a lot of pain points biggest problem is the techs anyways I was promised by 10:30am I should finally have highspeed internet my adverse speed is 8 mbps download put up with this way to long today my pain points should get. Enter.  We’ll see if all goes good that’s cool but if I have been lied to a can always talk with management would I recommend. Anyone tobsignup with T-Mobile no way most people won’t put up with crap I have had to do. Point is can I trust T-Mobile?

M

So here is my take on T-Mobile Home Internet. Signal quality is everything. If you get good signal, it performs well. But if your signal strength is 2 bars or less, look out, high latency, low throughput, and constantly loss of service. When I travel in the RV, I have had good experiences with the service, but at home it was a problem, and T-Mobile customer service was not able to help me solve the issue. Note I fixed the issue at home with a 5G signal booster (product I bought is a Hi Boost 4k, installed July 2022). Before I installed the signal booster, I had lousy internet performance, 1-2 signal bars. After I installed the product, I now have insanely fast internet, and 4-5 signal bars. I have a background in signal processing, so I am going to get a bit technical. I live on a lake, and there is a larger ridge of trees adjacent to my property that cuts into the signal for 5G. This was never a problem with LTE, but as you have heard, 5G degrades faster over distances, and stuff like trees smashes signal strength. After installing the product, signal strength increased as follows: 700MHz (LTE) 50dB, 800Mhz (5G mid band) 43dB, 1.9Ghz (5G hi band) 52dB (Verizon operates at this band), 2.5Ghz (5G hi band) 49dB (both Verizon and T-Mobile operate at this band). What does this all mean, I now get the SAME quality and insanely fast internet that folks in the cities and suburbs get on my T-Mobile Home Internet.

N
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The customers that live in the cities don’t need the homeinternet router for internet here’s why I was in porterville California I tested my internet speeds with the hotspot I got over 200mbps doesn’t load and just the 5G/lte even faster if I live in the city the homeinternet router would be a waste of money.

B

I was tired of Xfinity and Comcast so I switched over to t Mobile. Horrible. It's rare that we can watch a show or a movie without giving up while it loads forever twenty minutes into it. My kids can't log in in the evening to do schoolwork. We're honestly shocked on the rare occasion that it works!! Worst Internet yet. 

G

I give it one star because it cannot be used with PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series while playing most online multiplayer video games like Gran Turismo and a few others. The speeds are fine it's only good if you're a non-gamer. But most people own PlayStation 5s and Xbox Series and play multiplayer online I think it has something to do with the dynamic IP and not having a static IP like most other internet services that's why it doesn't work with the hotspot. If you don't game and just using your computer or fire TV or internet it would work for you but if you have any gamers in your house it drops the game doesn't connect a whole bunch of bad things and customer service has no answer for it and basically is just the same internet on their mobile phone it gets low priority on the tower and your speeds during the day are super slow now if you game late at night or early in the morning they're faster. But it's not worth the time after the money when you're dropped in the middle of a game or won't start. So advise anyone not to get this if they are a gamer that plays multiplayer online on anything

A

We are on the magenta plan and decided to try the t-mobile 5 g home internet. DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY IT IS GARBAGE! I couldn’t use it with my laptop without losing connection constantly.My tv was lagging when connecting to it too! Thank goodness I didn’t cancel my other service provider. T-Mobile is also very deceitful they sell you this junk of home internet by marketing a promotion and never deliver on anything they promised. I am considering looking for a new carrier for my cell phone service too since this company is not honest about the services they offer and don’t honor their promotions.

S

What has happened to T-Mobile home internet?!?!

We've been using this service since nearly the beginning. We had had no issues in that time. However in the last 2 weeks the service has been nearly useless.

It's a very unstable signal, constantly kicking us out out work due to slow or no internet connection, which then loses all the data on the forms being filled out.

T-Mobile even had us swap out the original modem, with no improvements. I've now had to move the modem (from its perch of nearly 2 years) to a new floating shelf I had to install just to get a mediocre signal!

This is garbage that T-Mobile can't figure out what they did in the area over the last 2 weeks that totally screwed up this server for their end user.

The time has now come to separate from T-Mobile and return back to the dreaded cable internet with their ever exploding prices once the 1st year is up.

I should also note, the internet on the T-Mobile plan is not stable right now either and I am seeing the phone search through different networks at lower speeds.

Sincerely let down by T-Mobile, 

Scott H.

L

I have had T Mobile Home Internet since it's beginning.  My original Gateway was overheating and dropping out. They sent me a new one and it has worked well for the past 3 years or so.

Then out of the clear blue the Gateway started doing the same thing dropping out then wait awhile and got would reconnet. No one could figure it out, so I stuck it in my freezer for 20 minutes then restarted it. All was well for a few hours then wammo dropped again.

I finally added 2 computer fans to the gateway and it has been working flawless since then.

 

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