Question

5G Home Internet Suddenly Very Unstable And Technical Support Is Essentially Useless

T
Userlevel 2
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Wondering if anyone else is having similar issues.

First, at $50/month for 5G speeds with no data caps, this service is pretty much the best deal out there.  When it is working well, we typically see speeds in the 60+ Mbps down/ 20+ Mbps up which is by far the best performance we’ve ever had at our house.  

Unfortunately, it has recently become the case that it almost never “works well”.  Over the last couple of weeks, we are lucky if we can get an hour a day where it is getting this kind of performance.  For much of the day, it is actually not even usable (we’re talking less than 1 Mbps and barely registering uploads).

The strange thing is that when we first got this modem, it never seemed to be the case.  I saw some forum discussions that overheating might be an issue, but it really isn’t that hot.  Additionally, when it is performing poorly, I noticed that we are getting less than two bars primary and zero bars secondary on the modem.  Again, this previously wasn’t the case.

Sometime rebooting with temporarily resolve this issue, but I am not kidding when I tell you that most days we restart the modem a minimum of five times.  Many times it simply doesn’t fix anything.

Compounding this is the fact that TMobile seems committed to off-shoring their technical support and the quality of this service is so bad it could be a post in itself.  Over the last couple of months I’ve probably called once a week, which typically eats up an hour of my day and has rarely resolved anything.  On three occasions, the representative told me they would call me back and not one has.  Not one.

On the last call, I managed to get a “manager” on the line who honestly was not any better than those who work for him.  His only solution was to downgrade us to LTE even after I told him that we ultimately go the 5G device because the LTE was working very poorly.

Anyway, I’m 99% sure I’m just going to have to bail on this service and go with Starlink which is available in my area.  This really bums me out because when Tmobile’s service is even working halfway decent it is more than enough for us, but “half-way decent” at this point is a dream state for us.

Again, I’m curious if others are having similar issues.  For what it is worth, we have the Nokia 5G cylindrical tower.

26 replies

T
Userlevel 1

Same. Not useable. My TMobile cell phone hotspot works great though. Need to look into starlink

D

Same here in North West Florida, still have the white 4g modem. Only works from 1AM till about 8 AM totally useless the rest of the time.

T
Userlevel 1

I just rotated the device and it seems to be working longer than 3 minutes

jlillard
Userlevel 4
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@TheloniusJ My device didn’t feel hot to the touch either but it was definitely overheating.

 

T
Userlevel 1

So update. Got that fan from Amazon. Didn't solve the problem. Problem was my eero system was causing it to crash. I hope that was the issue. Just connected straight to the tower and things started working again. With the fan turned on my speed doubled! 

N

I had the exact same problem for over 2 weeks. After 2 hours on the phone they determined I needed a new modem. A new modem solve the problem.  YOU NEED A NEW MODEM 

Just before disconnecting the old modem and removing the SIM card to place into my new one, suddenly 40% update popped up on the screen. Apparently the original router never completed its update. It's my suspicion this is what the problem was, not completing the update.

D

I have exactly the same problem. And I live in downtown San Diego. This service obviously has major issues. I have to restart my device 10 times a day, had a replacement sent and have exactly the same problem. They are refunding my monthly cost right now because I literally can use about 10MB of my 100MB max per month because how slow the 5g hot spot is. My 4G version worked 10X better.

D

One positive thing is they will refund your monthly bill for this problem and repay you for Inseego having faulty devices that overheat anytime they get over 73 degrees. These units are faulty and should have fans installed as well as a charging source that doesn’t cause the device to overheat. You have to unplug the units before they get to 100% or even in colder temps they overheat. So fans and unplugging from your power source REGULARLY is the answer until T-Mobile figures out the Inseego units are worthless.

W

From what I understand, the 5g home internet primary connection is 4g and the secondary connection is the 5g. This seems to be confirmed  by the band  each is using.

WHEN mine is operating relatively well, I have 2 bars on primary (useless) and three bars on secondary (satisfactory with 50Mbs and up)

My problem is I can't get consistent service. Up one day, sick the next!

R
Userlevel 2
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Leave while you can.  If you have anyone to call that can help do so now!!!  lol no but really if you have any other options, it's not worth the headache.  I could explain to you exactly why its unstable and I have 2 plausible reasons.  But it would be pointless because there is no solution unfortunately.  It's the service.  Hook line and sinker and it will only get worse.  And when it does get worse you wont have support to help you because customer support or technical support or internet support no longer exist.  What does exist is Tuker Suk Makyato of the Philippines who had such great trainer that the only two words of English he speaks is pin code.  Where are my manners I am so sorry.  I did not mean give out his real name.  You will know him by Tracy Mayers of California.  I know they had me fooled for a while too.  Finally I saw past fake name and heard the accent of unknown origins and the voice of a baritone male.  She had me I mean he had me tricked for so long they are good.  I honestly that it was Tracy I was speaking to and she was asking me for variations of different pin codes for a day straight! lol  See if you can get your money back and go.  Until we get an actual support line with people that know what they are talking about this company is not worth the 10 cents in 120.10 I pay each month.

L

Same problems here in Northeast Ohio. I'm def. Going to have to switch carriers unfortunately. This isn't the only problem though. Alot of the reason we have Internet is because I have gamers in my home. You need internet that has a certain NAT type to be able to play most games online with friends (something this company says they are "working on fixing" but In reality I honestly don't think she knew what I was talking about when I called support. The whole kit and caboodle is junk I'd say!!

A

Wow. The conversations I’ve heard are truly unbelievable, I have 5G in my area, we are working on the tower, you don’t have 5G in your area. Move it, unplug it once a week, unplug it so it can cool down multiple times a day, go back to lte, whatever you choose, we will respect that. Today, they just cut me off, I sit here on hold for the past 45 min (still on hold) with no internet service. I really liked T-Mobile. It literally worked great for years, not sure what happened, but I’m not seeing any resolution and I’ve been very patient. 

R
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I just got my replacement gateway the black one. It worked great for 6 hours till 12:00. am and now goes down every 2 minutes. What did you do T Mobile?

A

All of my internet problems started after upgrading to the gateway - I promptly returned if after 1 week, it clearly wasn’t working. Internet has not worked properly since, not even after going back to LTE, that had worked well for a couple of years without a single problem prior, the LTE tower is a block away from my home. T-Mobile cut off my internet last night, I spent 1.5 hours on tech support call and got cut off before resolving it - they never called me back. 

R
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T-Mobile, your loosing many potential and current customers by not having a 2nd and 3rd level of tech support! Why can’t I speak with engineer to help these ongoing issues?

M

Same issue with Home internet in Southeast Michigan. Worked great until May of this year and speed suddenly dropped to 7Mbps and now less than 2Mbps. Tech support is a joke and all I get as a cause is "maintenance is being done on the tower and speeds will be even better than before in a week...I guarantee it". What a bunch of liars. I was with tech support over 3 hours yesterday and they actually made my speed worse ( .2Mbps). New gateway coming but I don't see this as the problem since my neighbor is having the same issue.  Its as if they are throttling my speed down all of the sudden.  What a shame...I had such high hopes

T

I've had the exact same experience in Virginia, with speeds dropping to low single digits over the last 3 months, after being good for over a year. And always the same excuse from tech support as others have said- they blamed it on tower upgrades and promised improvement when completed. I upgraded from the Nokia to the Arcadyan gateway but that made no difference, except the Arcadyan gets a better signal (3 bars vs 2) but speeds are still poor, rarely getting above 10 Mbps. And it never connects to the 5g secondary band, just 4g. In the past I was getting fairly consistent connections to both. Very frustrating as we don't have any other good Internet options here.

V

My internet was working perfectly until Jun 1st and since then is absolutely useless. Once I connect to my VPN at work have problems working in the systems. 

I called T mobile multiple times and tried explain to Technical department the issues I am experiencing but I am not able to get thru them.

I was very happy with Gateway for a long time but looks like I need to switch to a new provider. What a shame T mobile….

S

I started having issues pretty much when I plugged it in. Support advised that three towers in my area are ‘undergoing major updates’- not my problem buddy, it’s T-Mobile’s job to adequately support the products they sell. I’m moving in a month and it’s not available there, so I hoping I can find something more reliable. Recommendations? Woodbury, MN

M
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as a NEW member here with Tmobile cell and internet for only 3 days, I’m struck by the lack of TMOBILE personnel response to this problem on this thread.  Where are they? Why are they not saying anything about this complaint.  This thread has convinced me to return the gateway that seems to work for WAY MORE hours a day than what you guys are describing but I’m worried about the ONGOING ramifications of turning off my VERY EXPENSIVE XFINITY service which is also flaky at times but at least I have 20 years of experience with them.  So far, with Tmobile it’s been sketchy...in terms of help and service.  It is entirely dependent on WHO you are lucky enough to get connected to. There’s little consistency in terms of knowledge and expertise.  ALL of my “FEELS” are screaming at me to run away.

 

S

I agree wholeheartedly. In my limited experience, support staff strives to sound accommodating and thoughtful, but it comes across as fawning. Makes me pretty uncomfortable.

H

5G HOME INTERNET IS USELESS, SWITCHING TO VERIZON

I live in Vegas. I can SEE the T MOBILE ARENA from my apartment. I recently got one of these horrible 5G home modems. THIS THING IS GARBAGE.

If I power cycle it it works okay for a couple of minutes, THEN it drops to BELOW DIAL UP SPEEDS and stays there until I power cycle it again. I’ve put it in the window (WTF??) I can SEE a cell tower from my front door.

Numerous calls to customer service have solved nothing. Hours have been wasted on hold and call backs.

What a total POS!! Why on earth would you roll this terrible product out when it clearly doesn’t work? I’ve been reading everyone else's problems on here as well.

Here’s the clincher: When I search for ‘available wi fi networks’ virtually everyone in my complex is on Verizon. As of this weekend I will be too.

THANKS FOR NOTHING T MOBILE,

ABSOLUTE GARBAGE. USELESS.

N

50$ a month for service that is worse than dial-up and disconnects and resets connection regularly.  They clearly should not have rolled out this service the way that they have.  I have had this service for about half a year and it has had severe ups and downs though as time  went on it just kept getting worse.  It has been in a state that has been completely unusable and unreliable to the point where I am practically forced to cancel their service.  I have a folder with months of speedtests where I am averaging under 1Mbps...with some being unable to even put the speed on the scale and they show up as 0.00Mbps.  Checking email is the only thing that can be done and only when it isn’t disconnecting.  Web surfing is a horrible experience as any images or complicated web sites might not even load properly.  Gaming has been impossible with occasional moments where I think its ok and during gaming it will lose connection or drop speed back down.  I know that they won’t do it but they should give refunds to customers in any areas where they obviously could not give the kind of service they are advertising, or at least stop billing customers in those areas until they actually do make it so that what they say they sold is actually what all their customers are getting.  They don’t even have the courtesy to make any kind of support ticket or ability to cancel the service for 5G home internet service on their website.

N

That is about par for the course that I get for their connection speed, which is unusable.

A

It used to work great for us until last week.  Got new modem, and no Internet access for a week...no compensation offered either.  They said cell tower issues being worked on..

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