Question

tmobile home internet speed issues

  • 17 March 2021
  • 55 replies
  • 26494 views

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I just got this and once or twice I got 50mbps for a minute or two but the rest of the time 1-3mbps download and 15mbps upload.

Cant figure this out and not many settings to change. Been on hold for customer support for an hour yesterday and today and can't get through.. any ideas?

 

Thank you


55 replies

I just got this and once or twice I got 50mbps for a minute or two but the rest of the time 1-3mbps download and 15mbps upload.

Cant figure this out and not many settings to change. Been on hold for customer support for an hour yesterday and today and can't get through.. any ideas?

 

I have been having the same issue with super slow speeds. I messed around with a ton of settings on my phone that the T-Mobile  internet app i manage the T-Mobile gateway ion and suddenly I have 80mbps again, and the gateway is connecting to 5g again.   Maybe a coincidence, but the changes I made in my phones settings: always use 5g, allow roaming, cell service to auto instead of T-Mobile. I’ll update if my speeds slow again and it WAS just a weird coincidence.  

i am getting 1-3mbps pretty much all the time but 10-15mbps upload? its basically unusable at this point as some pages wont even load.

Same in the Country in Washington State...basically unusable most of the time.

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I just got this and once or twice I got 50mbps for a minute or two but the rest of the time 1-3mbps download and 15mbps upload.

Cant figure this out and not many settings to change. Been on hold for customer support for an hour yesterday and today and can't get through.. any ideas?

 

Thank you

When I bought my new T-Mobile service & new phone recently the sales guy talked me right into the T-Mobile Home Internet and he handed me a modem with him knowing that it doesn’t work well at all in our area. It was so slow I couldn’t even stream a simple video and we tried every location in our home and still only got 1-2 bars to show up. I kept it for less than a month but when I cancelled the home internet I still had to ship the modem back by mail instead of just taking the modem back to my local T-Mobile store. It’s pretty bad when our CenturyLink Internet works better than their T-Mobile Home Internet.

I live in a more rural area in Ft Myers FL. The only wired internet options currently are Centurylink DSL which is not very good. I decided to give the T mobile Home internet a try. I am unable to get the unlimited so am trying the 150g month plan to start.  I set up the gateway yesterday and have a full 5 bar excellent 5g connection. I only have my work computer and phone connected and I am only getting .5 to 5mb if lucky download speeds. I called the TMO rep and they said this was unacceptable speed but that there  was a ticket for cell tower maintenance going on and they would check back with me in a few days. I really want this to work as I work from home and even if I can just get a consistent 25mb download I would be happy.  This will be temporary until Fiber comes to our area. I will try and repost in a week to see if anything changes.    

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It literally took my 5G internet a full minute to post that message.

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5 bar connection, and I’m lucky if the speed test will even go through.  For one day i got 100+ mbs down.  Now I can’t use it at all for work, it’s between 0.5mbs to 6mbs, and webpages wont even load.  My 5g phone on the other hand gets 75+ all day every day.  Thanks for the “fast and reliable” 5g internet… At least I got a 14 day trial to realize their advertisements are a scam.  Of course the box is free, they want me to pay $50 a month for no internet.

I got this service for my son to use in college. We were told his apartment is 1000 feet from a tower. The gate way is almost full bars and get a n41 and maybe a b66. Initially, we had trouble connecting. We were told the tower was undergoing maintenance. We can connect after a few days, but the speed is junk. It bounces around so much that his roommate said she can’t even stream an old lecture. This service is totally inconsistent. Restarting did not help. His roommates are speaking of going back to Comcast. I was pretty excited about the prospects when I saw how close the tower is, but that is no guarantee of good service.

I live within 3 miles of 3 different towers and still can’t get above 10mb consistently, my current signal stats are primary rssi: -62 rsrq: -10 rsrp: -92 and sinr 19.1 on b66 and the secondary signal is rsrq -11 rsrp: -94 sinr 24.1 on n41 speed test results 88 ping 12 jitter 9.73mb down and 28.4 up 2nd speed test 38 ping 11 jitter 2.6 down 27.7 up. why are the download speeds so bad. I have the grey trashcan gateway

I had same problem with speed declining significantly at night in rural area.  Good in the morning till about 5pm when it drops to 2 mpbs. After several months with tech support and two trouble tickets. The second  trouble ticket said the tower had too many customers on it at night and was over subscribed.  So I returned the gateway and got my money back after three months for paying $50/month for a tower did not have capacity for the customers on it.

Not sure why some of you are getting those speeds, I think the lowest I go most of the time is around 150ish but I avg 450+. Try this though. Connect to the router using the web-based GUI at http://192.168.12.1/.  Check to see what you are getting for the secondary signal cause that is the 5G one. If you aren’t receiving any signal there or it's super low then most likely you are only hitting 4G towers which are nowhere near as fast. 

Thanks, I checked and i Don't have a secondary signal. I live in a Rural area so I understand if i get atleast 35-50mbps, but im barely getting 7-11mbps. Do you know how to get a secondary connection signal or is that just something thats supposed to happen on its own?

You have to split the signal between 2.4 and 5ghz then connect to the 5ghz only and rund a speedtest.  I have had this service for a month with slo 30mbps speeds, I did the split this morning, connected to the 5ghz signal now I am getting 300mbps, huge improvement!  Thank you Trandel!

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yes same here , was exited to have it but inconsistent speed, so you go back to the evil company Comcast , mind asking what you pay per month , because they are legit thieves 

I echo the sentiments of many on this thread who advocate class action.  My experience was that, behiing in 10/2021, I was consistently getting 300mbs down and 40mbs up UNTIL three weeks ago when it suddenly dropped to <40 down and <1 up.  Even worse, the ping is mostly >100ms and often exceeds 400ms, rendering many websites and all streaming services stuttery at best and often unuseable, even when the speedtest says 30mbs.  My signal shows 4 bars on both primary and secondary.  Power cycling everything has no discernable effect.  I called several times to say WTH, and am being told of 'service maintenance' events every time I call.  I now think they are lying.  To summarize, like many on this thread, i initially received good service (first couple of months) which then changed to crappy ALMOST unuseable service.  In the meantime, I'm crafting a complaint to the FCC and going back to Comcast (which I hate/despise/loath).  GLTA

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When I had the older modem, 4G. It was one for the testing areas. I had good internet no issues at all. It was great. Then they switched to the 5g modems. The gray ones that get warm. I hardly have anything now. I even have to tether off my phone at times., it's that slow. They sent me a replacement modem. Didn't change anything. T-Mobile has told me it's because there to many people using the towers. I said then you are throttling my internet usage then. T-Mobile said no they are not restricting my internet. I asked if there are too many people using the tower, who is getting service and who isn't. If I am not getting service, then I have to be throttled till a certain time because I can only use t mobile internet in the morning and later evening. During the day, forget it. And they dont care. Its put up with it or find a new internet provider. 

The most frustrating thing is my speed could be 75-100mbps in the morning and 10 or less in the afternoon. I have been on numerous calls with tech support, gotten a different gateway, and still spotty service. As much as it pains me I will probably have to go back to cable internet until T-MOBILE gets this under control.

Just want to add to the list that I’m experiencing similar problems. Averaging less than 3 Mbs down loads in speed tests. Ticket open with engineering and results promised by 5-Feb-2022. I’ll report back if they are able to pinpoint anything, but don’t hold your breath. This has been progressively deteriorating over the past 18 months or more.

I keep telling myself I’m saving $20.00 a month. Speeds are horrible, sites take forever to load or timeout and don’t load at all and Roku often freezes and takes 10-20 seconds to catch up. Barely acceptable for the casual use in my home, wouldn’t work for someone actually doing something. It’s new and T-Mobile doesn’t seem to have the infrastructure to deal with the demand, maybe they will do something about it. Hey, it’s $20.00 cheaper per month than anyone else here.

When I first got this back in May of 2021 My speeds were at 200Mbps and I told all my friends and bragged about how fast this went.  Then near the end of the year they did some “Changes” and now my fastest speed is about 20Mbps and that is on a good day.  Man this thing is sooooooo slow.

They had me reset my gateway and then send me a new one and still the slowest. I think they must have either saturated my area or redirected the antennna on the tower as it doesn’t get hardly any speed even with 3 bars.

I agree with your contention that this might be a situation where a class action lawsuit might be appropriate. I plan on contacting my state’s Attorney General’s office to determine what action to take.

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This service sucks big time. I got this back in july of 2021 and for the first few months I was consistently getting about 50 mbps. Coming from dsl, to me that was great. I live alone so it was more than enough. Than I noticed with each passing month, it the speeds started dropping. It’s now January 2022 and I barely get 1 mbps. This is unacceptable.

I work from home and I am constantly getting getting kicked out of zoom calls. I can no longer listen to zoom calls via the computer, I have to dail in on my cell phone. Like everyone else I have tried all of the “fixes” and nothing works. I am so dissappointed. I will probably have to go with another service.

I wonder if this would be grounds for a class action suit for false advertising. I know speeds vary but telling people they will get up to 100 mbps or more but are only getting l mbps is false advertising in my opinion. They really do need to tell people the average speed seems to be 1 mbps no matter where you are in the country. This is much worse than dsl.

I’ve had this service for ~ 6 weeks and have had very good speeds, averaging around 200 mbps down, 60-70 up. In the last two days it’s been 8-12 down, 3-5 up, and is now unusable. I was planning on recommending this to my neighbors, as we are all forced to use a very expensive cable alternative in my town. I am rethinking this now. If it keeps up like this, I’ll have to fall back to cable. It’s certainly not what they promised me.

Same for me. Hate to go back to xfinity but T-Mobile isn’t delivering what they promised

 

I am out in Phoenix, Az. I’ve had these speeds since I started my service.

I’m in Laveen, AZ.  My ISP is a random ISP, Phoenix Internet, and we get about 5 mbps down and not even 1 up.  I saw this gateway ad on Tmobile and reached out to a Tmobile sales rep and was told I’d get no less than 180 down and 34 up.  I plugged in the gateway and got 160 up the first day, since then I'm only getting no more than 2 mbps up.  I’m really losing faith in this gateway and was told by a TMO rep that I have a 14 day buyers remorse.  Probably not going to keep this.

Seriously guys, I don’t know what many of you are complaining about.  We live in a semi-rural area and the best we get first thing in the morning is about 15-20 mbps down and usually less than 1 mbps up.   When we first got this about 4 months ago, we could stream live sports with no buffering, no issues whatsoever.  It freaking rocked!!!!  However, that was short-lived as now it just crawls.  I have rebooted, unplugged, cleared messages, done the technical support stuff, and its still slow.  We have ZERO secondary signal.  When I first got this, I was so hopeful because of my dislike of ATT but it is worse.  The only benefit of the T-Mobile is there is no data cap like with the AT&T version (150gb).  However, the T-Mobile speed makes it unusable except for general browsing only and that’s about it.  For comparison purposes, we have ATT version as well, and we get 35-40 mbps down and 20-25mbps up.  I know its not great but thats the non-satellite options we have in our area. 

Thanks for advice and tips.

 

It’s a 5G tower. I used a 3rd party cell tower lookup site to verify. No glass view to it though as it’s on opposite side of billing from my room.

Ended up chatting w TNO and found out it’s undergoing maintenance until Monday. TMO is going to contact me after to check w speeds. They agreed I should be getting more than 20Mbps. 

I also realized after that my iPhone and Cellular iPad DL speeds were also diminished, compared to earlier. I had been getting 250 Mbps (5G) until Thursday when tower must have had hardware issue. 
 

so their story holds water for now. 
 

Murphy’s law timing I guess. 

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Maybe I am getting 5G?

 


Mickey, if you’re not showing a signal on the Secondary -- you said that in the previous post that you aren’t -- then you are on 4G LTE. The 5G signal current technology is a non-standalone 4G/5G pair, whereas 4G LTE stands alone on one 4G signal band, prefaced with a “B”. The 5G shows on the secondary signal prefaced with an “n” as is usually either n41 (mid-frequency) or n71 (low-frequency).

It’s a shame you’re so close to the 5G tower though, and not getting faster speeds, but you’re right in thinking it can have something to do with the wall composition of the building you’re in. The gateway works best in a window facing the tower, usually.

So you’re sure this 5G tower is a Tmobile tower? There is a vlogger on YouTube from Phoenix, “Tech Extremist” who travels around testing all the towers in Phoenix, including T mobile.Drop him a line in the comments in one of his videos about Tmobile home internet. He knows the equipment on all these towers and might have an idea of why you’re getting such speeds, or unable to pick up the 5G signal from where you are.

Another thing that can account for a slower speed or not getting a 5G signal is that the density of different providers in a big city and the frequencies they use limits the degrees in a direction to which they broadcast. It’s called a sector. They don’t broadcast 360 degrees. They direct it out in a limited sector, to avoid signal conflicts. So you may be on the opposite side of where the antennas are directed.

 

 

Maybe I am getting 5G?

 

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