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Tmobile change

  • 1 February 2023
  • 6 replies
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I have been a T-Mobile Home Internet customer for about a month now. At first the speeds were great, but after a week they started slowing down and becoming very inconsistent. Now today I had to get on zoom for a meeting and I could tell something was not right. I checked my speed ad it was .5 to 2 downloads and had trouble even reading the upload speed. I kept getting disconnected from zoom and finally just gave up. Then came the surprise. I called T-Mobile to see what was going on and after confirming that my speeds were very slow, the agent said that when he entered my address, that it said Home Internet was not available at my place, even though it was available a month ago when I signed up? I live about 2 miles from the tower, and according to the map I am in the 5g area. I was just about to cancel my slow Centurylink service, but now I'm not sure what to do. The agent put in a ticket and said he would get back to me Saturday. So I guess I’ll just wait and see what happens.

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Best answer by litewavve 2 February 2023, 02:10

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6 replies

My home entered shows connection  error on my tv 

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Thank you for your reply. That all makes sense. My speeds with centurylink are 10 download and only .75 upload. That’s the fastest available speeds at my address.

Userlevel 2
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Inconsistency is name of this service. The performance depends on many factors, including how many users of the service served by the same antenna on the tower, how busy is the tower at the time, the radio band you are connected to, and the secretive T-Mobile traffice management algorithm.  

It is not surprising that your address used to be open for T-Mobile internet and becomes unavailable now.  T-Mobile only allows certain number of slots per area. Once they are full, their system will not allow new users. 

To improve inconsistent performance issue, the only way that I know of (and tested) is through an external MIMO antenna.  Unfortunately, this method is expensive and requires quite a bit of work. There are youtube videos showing you how to do that. You should have a good chance to make the minimal performance level comparable to CenturyLink service (assuming your HDSL service is 60/6) but not guaranteed.

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As long as it is still unlimited with no data caps.

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Thank you very much for  your reply. I’ll definitely let you know what the agent tells me when he calls Saturday.

Userlevel 6
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T-Mobile and Verizon offer a new type of Internet call Fixed Wireless Internet (FWI) which is still in its infancy. It is very possible that the marketing for this service jumped the gun in telling you that FWI was available, when in fact it wasn't.

When I first got T-Mobile Home Internet, I was convinced I'd connect at 5G speeds. Instead, I can only connect via 4G LTE. Nonetheless, my speed is anywhere between 35-70 Mbps, more than enough to service what we use with the Internet in my home, including streaming TV, three always-on computers, iPhones, iPads, security cameras and several Amazon Echo devices. In other words, while I'd like to connect via 5G, I'm getting plenty of speed with just 4G.

My point is, see what the agent says when he gets back to you. Connecting at only 4G speeds is not a problem IF the signal is strong enough.

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