5G Home internet keeps dropping!

My connection was generally good until yesterday. Tech support have not been able to help, in part because my calls (through a T-Mobile MNVO keep getting dropped).  To me this suggests problems with the tower--but what do I know? One tech asked me to do a factory reset (no luck). Another tech on a subsequent call asked for my IMEI and said that they did something, though it didn’t work either. I just tested my Up/Down on OOKlA 18 Mbps down and 24 Mbps up.  

I am in the San Fernando Valley, so overheating could be an issue, but the problem began in the evening and when I had WiFi turned off via script.  

The problem may or may not be with the gateway. You will have to contact T-Mobile support and ask about the work on the equipment in the area. They could be working on the equipment for the cells in the area so it would be a tower problem. From what you can see the internet connection is not available therefore the cellular connection is a highly probable source of the problem.

One thing you can look at are notifications the gateway may have recorded so check for notifications via the LED screen. Another thing to try would be to power the gateway off and remove and reinsert the SIM card. If there is a problem with the SIM card, which some Arcadyan gateways seem to have, then this might help if it is related. That is why I would suggest to check the notifications for errors related to the SIM card. Reseating the SIM card will not hurt. If you have a T-Mobile phone and both tend to use the same cellular source that might be another clue. If your phone transitions to another cell when the gateway drops its cellular signal then it could be a tower equipment related problem. T-Mobile engineers might be performing work on the equipment in the area. T-Mobile does not appear to provide any customer notifications regarding work being performed on the equipment. 

I got home from 10 days of vacation and found that my internet kept dropping out a few minutes after rebooting the router. When I connected a device directly via an ethernet cable the connection time was elongated by about an hour but still would fail. I have opened many service tickets regarding this with no correction. They tell me that they are working through the engineers to correct a software issue but I have found that it is still failing after three days of this continual reboot and use for a short period of time. At this point it fails immediately upon reboot. The device still says it is connected to the Internet although all connected devices to the Wi-Fi or ethernet port say there is no Internet. I am at the end of my rope  for how to get this resolved through technical support.

This started happening to me back in July.  I ultimately had to cancel my T-Mobile home Internet because it just wasn’t working for us.  It was nearly flawless for the first seven or eight months of service.  Easily over 300 Mbps for all of our (20+) devices.  It was a dream replacement for our cable Internet that was just getting more and more expensive.  However, no Internet just doesn’t work, so we replaced it with Verizon 4G LTE which is admittedly MUCH slower.  Slower, but reliable and always present.  That works for us.  I am very sad that T-Mobile quit on us.  It was great while it lasted.  I think that our usage got us bumped off.  We routinely used in excess of 1,600 Gb of data monthly.  Interestingly, though, during this time our phone’s 5G failed to provide Internet for us.  To get an Internet connection with our phones, we needed to downgrade to LTE.  5G would connect, but it wouldn’t provide ANY Internet access.  That is clearly unacceptable for a home Internet solution.

I signed up for Tmobile Home Internet 5G service on 9/7/22 and had no problems during the first 2 weeks. Then, on the 3rd week, I started to notice frequent drops in service. where I would get drops between 7:30am to about 7:00PM. It has progressively gotten worse. Today (9/29), I had a total of 10-15 drops. I can no longer make Zoom or VOIP calls as it frequently cuts off during the middle of the calls.

My daily usage is about 15G per day so about 450G/month. I don’t think this is is excessive but it appears Tmobile is throttling me now.

Ive spoken to Tmobile several times and I tried all their solutions.

   Power off the device for 1min and power on - Nope.

   Replace the Sagecom Gateway with another one - Nope

   Do a factory reset on Home Gateway device. - Nope.

   Tmobile representative reset the connection from their end - Nope

   We will add more capacity to the tower - Tower is transmitting N71 (600mhz band but low capacity). I am hoping they will add N41 (2.5ghz band with higher capacity). I live about ½  mile away from the tower with direct line of sight so I should be able to receive N41 signals when it become available. Tmobile could not give a ETA for adding N41. I would not hold my breath.

One last observation that has me perplexed. My Gateway is a Sagecom 5688W, I get strong signals (RSRP = -78) but the quality of the signal is poor ((RSRQ = -12) according to Tmobilie. I am going to swap out the Sagecom for the Nokia 5g21 gateway at the Tmobile store to see if it makes any difference. I will add comments after I test this.

I do have a question about the nature of how Tmobile throttles your internet connection. I noticed that the throttling that Tmobile imposes is the following. When in the middle of browsing, getting email, or Zooming, the internet data transfer stops completely but does not actually disconnect. After about 1 minute, it is restored. In fact, I usually run a speedtest after the internet recovers. I get the following result: 125m down and 30 up. Rather than slowing you down, they stop data transfer for about 1 - 3 minutes. This result is worse than slowing your data transfer speed.

In fact, I tested this with another carrier (Verizon hotspot) but it never stopped completely. Rather, data speed was in fact slower.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Hi Melo, 

thanks for the reply. I can definitely relate to your experience as it almost matches mine.  I was getting very good internet service from Jan. 2022 to around August 2022, and then the wifi/internet would cut off and come back on again after a few minutes, this would happen a couple times per day, then it got worse where it would cut off multiple times per for longer times.  I called the so called “experts” and got no where.  They sent a new modem (I was led to believe it was a different and better one but it was the same model!), and they changed the account to a lesser (limited data) so this did nothing other than waste my time.  The “exeperts” are all from a call center Tmobile has in the Philippines.  The people there are nice but they read/play off a script and really just say everything will be fine, we will fix it, and that is all a lie.  They cannot fix anything.  I then had to return the modem, and went to a Tmobile store and they were useless, just told me to call 611.  I called again and the girl gave the same story, oh they are working on the 5g tower and it will be better.  They provided no other details, when the work started, what the nature of the upgrades are, when it will be completed, etc.  I was suppose to get a 20$ discount but Tmobile charged me extra for the modem that didn’t work so now I need to call them again to fix it.  I liked the idea of coupling cellphone and internet for $135 all inclusive per month; the cell service is not great but so far I can live with it (I had ATT previously and they are better but Verizon is the best (and most expensive unless you have multiple lines on account)) but the internet service from this 5g system is not consistent and Tmobile customer service and business is deceptive.  I will wait and see if it does improve, but if by January 2023 (1 year of Tmobile for me) it is not better, I am dropping Tmobile.

I did my homework before I even decided to get the home internet.. i always have a computer fan placed under it running 24/7.. so unfortunately this isn't a case of overheating. 

It looks like the stores are no longer stocking Nokia 5g gateway. I spoke with another representative and said the tower is going to get a capacity upgrade 4Q2022. There is a capacity issue at the tower at the moment.

According to my Sagecom Gateway, I only have access to the N71 band (low band low capacity) connection.

I assume if and whey they upgrade, Tmo will add the N41 band (mid band higher capacity). Is everyone experiencing the frequent drops only connecting to the N71 5G band?

This is also happening to me. I purchased this service back in May I believe and it was working really well up until the past couple of months or so. I called them today and they said I should come get the updated gateway that would fix the issue, came home and connected the new one - nothing has changed. I live in an area where most internet services can’t reach so I’m at a loss here.

For what it’s worth, I’ve had the newer SAG FAST5688W gateway for about 2 months now and it is having the same drop issues, so I would doubt the issue is with the various gateways. The longest connection sustained so far has been a little over 2 days, and the worst has been multiple reboots per day. That said, when the service connects, I do usually get over 50Mb throughput (it’s using the N71 band). Being in rural Virginia, this is great for us. 

To help make the constant rebooting less aggravating, I did see in another thread a device called Keep Connect - $50 on Amazon. Installed it yesterday and it has already automatically rebooted the device once, so now I don’t have to manually intervene. We’ll see - gateway has now been up 16h 38m 19s.

It’s unfortunate that T-Mobile can’t/won’t fix their software to do what the Keep Connect device does - automatically detect connection failure and restore it. Funny how you never have to reboot your phone.

This is what I found:  (don’t know if it’s accurate or complete?)

Older:  Nokia 5G21 (gray)
Current:  Arcadyan KVD21 (black)
Newest:  Sagemcomm FAST 5688W (black)

My KVD21 is not overheating.  My devices rarely disconnect from the gateway.  A few weeks ago, I started frequently losing Internet access, even though they are still connected.  Sometimes it will repair on it’s own.  Often I have to reboot the gateway to restore Internet access. Sometimes several times a day.  It feels like a software problem on the gateway.  Maybe with DNS not working?

I almost always have 4 bars on the signal strength, occasionally 3 or 5, but 4 is pretty consistent.

What I’ve learned through this is T-Mobile has signed on more people than the towers can handle. As such, there are drops. At this time, there is nothing the support dept. can do except continue to regurgitate the generic script, i.e. working on towers, replace router etc. 

Until they expand their systems, drops will continue. 

I feel the same way you do. I have been with T-Mobile for close to 20 years. If I ever had a problem, they helped. But this feels like something much worse. I feel like I was sold a service that they knew wasn’t what they were selling. One of the techs I talked to told me it was an experiment and just be patient and hang in there, I didn’t buy an experiment I believe everything you say they oversold and now they’re trying to play catch-up. To keep me they are going to have to offer me something I do not want to go back to cable and now I am so deep into T-Mobile with a new phone and all these bells and whistles that I bought and the Internet, I don’t know how to get out without spending a lot of money , they don’t throttle us, but if we have unlimited data plans, which on the home Internet, we all do, they do, you prioritize us during rush hour, whenever that is. So my 2MBPS drops even further to the point of not even being able to run a speed test . That’s going to far.