Slow 4G connection only, but only sometimes -- SOLVED

Thank you for responding. This is the kind of thing I’m interested in. The phone app gives out information but for some reason leaves off the secondary signal, so that’s why I use the GUI for that.

Are you using the GUI or just the T mobile home internet phone app? And when you say the speed is great, what kind of speed we talkin about here?

“Great” is relative to what you had in the past or expect. For some people 40 is great, and others anything under 200 is disappointing.

Also, what’s your signal strength, on both your 5G phone and your gateway?

A commenter responded to a post of mine on another thread saying he got 400 down and 50 up on T mobile’s home internet 5G but dropped to 60 to 80 when on a primary 4G signal, and he gets stuck on that 4G signal for long periods which is totally unacceptable for him because he’s used to  steady speeds in the hundreds on cable. He gets 5 bars signal strength and indeed, by lowering that down (by putting foil over the gateway)  he can connect to 5G only with fewer bars, but then his speeds drop off way too much. 

However, if you are using the GUI at the address I mentioned in my first post, and showing no secondary signal, chances are your B12 and B66 are 4G only. And that isn’t bad! As long as the 4G works reasonably well for you. Also, the near future could be dramatic for you, when they install the 5G on your tower like n41, and you start getting that as your secondary signal. 

One form of 4G they put in Chicago, I read, and people can get speeds of 500Gbps if they are close enough to the tower.

About the 5G icon on your phone, here is a quote from an article:

T-Mobile has been adding this icon on their phones even when they are not connected to the 5G network, so if you are unsure, download the app Signal Spy (on Android) or enter Field Test Mode on your iPhone

I see. Interesting. Indeed, B25 is a 4G LTE Sprint band, along with B26 and B41. T mobile merged with Sprint but I didn’t know they were using any other bands than the ones I listed in the chart, which is the ones they say they are using for their T mobile home internet 5G (gray cylinder gateway) service.

There’s a little confusion here, in how they are naming these bands, and I find it that way since “b” or usually “B” could be construed as just short for “band.” But that is not how it appears in the GUI. So you will know you are on 5G the first time you see a band you are using in the secondary signal that is an “n” band such as n71 (low frequency/slow, long range), n41 (mid frequency/faster), and  n260 or n261 (mmWave/fast, short range).

n41, the mid frequency, mid-range 5G band was part of T mobile’s interest in merging with Sprint. It carries a signal which yields good speeds farther from the tower, compared with n71, even though the signal doesn’t reach as far. It reaches much father than the mmWave high-frequency bands which are only good for one mile, and tend to work with the fastest speeds when you are a block or less from them, with no obstructions. 

Verizon is making a bigger push with the short-range, fast speed mmWave nodes.

So what is your average download speed, approximately, on the bands you get now, the speed you are happy with for now?

Okay, well now I’ve got the full picture. Thanks. You’re a real pioneer being on this home cellular with that other device which didn’t have 5G.

Even though I got this just a week ago, I feel stunned being in the first year of 5G home internet by T mobile, at this price. I had to wait 7 years after broadband was available in the city 10 miles away for me to get it. So I was stuck on dialup forever it seemed, going to the library in town to do fast updates of Windows 10 using their wireless.

So I just got my first smartphone last month, and it is 4G only, and before that I was on a 3G phone that used to drop calls unless I used it in a part of my house where it wouldn’t do that. But the difference for me between the 4G phone was I got speeds on that of 10 to 60, with maybe an average of 25 or so. So I think my 5G speeds on this gateway are even better than the promise of 2x the speed of 4G that many people see. Tell me if you pick up a n41 somewhere in your travels with your phone and what kind of speeds you get on that.

I can see why you’re losing hope. I’ll be frank and say it sounds kind of hopeless. You didn’t mention your signal strength or your distance to the tower, and how many obstructions there are between the tower and you. Are you city or rural?

The only hope is that they are doing tower work, or have temporarily shifted you to a tower that is farther away and it will be this slow until the work is done. This is a slim chance, but it is possible. Call T mobile and ask if that is what is happening at your tower. Leave your number for the callback instead of waiting two bloody hours to speak to someone. (I just happened to have called them once, but it was about my account, to make sure  I was on autopay.)

Yeah, a ping of over 150 is bad, and if it is frequently over that into ping like 800, that will make your connection lag, stop, and be unusable most of the time. They are not throttling your speed. That would not influence ping.

Assuming there is no work being done on the tower, there is a possibility you’re in a dead zone with a lot of interference. This interference can be caused by overlapping signals from two towers, or something like a nearby electrical power station.

Do you have a 4G smartphone, and what provider is it, and what kind of speed were you getting with that?

If you were getting a speed of over 30 on a 4G smartphone, or better yet, were able to find someone with a T mobile 5G smartphone who could do a speed test in your house and got good speeds on 5G, I would say that could point to something being wrong with your gateway.

But reading about people’s experiences, and the ones who tried getting another gateway before giving up, it rarely is the gateway that is the problem.

I have my own story about encountering a dead zone, at my brother’s house. He is much closer to a t-mobile tower than I am. According to their coverage map, both T mobile’s 4G and 5G are a level better than what I can expect in my location. I went to his house with my 4G smartphone -- he doesn’t have a smartphone yet -- and I got a speed of 12 download, and went out to the park near him -- same speed. But looking at his tower location, there is a massive electrical substation located between him and the tower, about 6 blocks from him, and I wonder if that is it. I don’t know what his 5G speeds are but we’ll just wait until one of his friends gets a 5G phone and can test for him, before he tries the T mobile home internet.

Your pattern of getting a better signal at night, as bad as it is, is the same as nearly everyone. If you haven’t done it yet, you might also try doing a factory reset, using the hole located above the two yellow LAN ports on the gateway. Stick the end of a paper clip or something in there for 4 seconds. Then you’re going to have to start over with the app.

I admit that I consider myself to be terribly lucky, to be 5 miles from a tower, and that this tower has n41 instead of n71. But it was also predictable. My 4G speed on the T mobile smartphone was between 10 and 60 (with the high speeds at night only), and then with the 5G on the same tower, I expected to get 2x the speed and got 3x the speed instead.

But if you give up and turn it back in, which I probably would do in your situation, try to keep in contact with neighbors or something via a message board and find out what provider is getting the best 5G service in your area, because it may not be there now, but it most likely will be coming soon.

And remember if there is a store near you, you can turn the gateway back in to the store and not have to mail it back in, if that is more convenient.

Lastly, the traffic of cell phone use and streaming videos, video chat, downloading things and other things during the day is what gives most people faster speeds late at night or in the early morning hours when people aren’t doing those things.

And as I said before, ping is what is really killing you. Even if you were getting speeds of 300, a ping of 800 would cause so much lag, halting, well, that would be a problem.

But who knows, maybe with a tower in a different location from Verizon instead of T mobile, and this could work for you.

You answered all the questions I asked, thanks, and like many people’s slow speed problems, yours sound mysterious and/or complex, and out of the realm of my own short time (I’m in my second week) of having T mobile home internet.

I’d like to remind anyone reading this that I created this thread to offer a suggestion to people who had a specific problem. That is, they get good speeds for their area, like 50+ download consistently on a primary and secondary signal, but occasionally they get switched to a primary-only 4G LTE signal which is much slower, or slower and glitchy (with lag), and they can’t reboot the modem/router off it.

My suggestion is to move the router/modem to a place where it gets one bar or even two bars less signal, to see if when you reboot, it connects to the faster 5G primary and secondary pair, which is actually at 4G/5G pair of a “B” band with an “n” band. After it reboots to the faster speed paired signals/bands, you can then either leave the gateway where it is, or even move it back to where you get the best signal.

From a reader, I learned you can also temporarily knock a signal strength bar off your connection by covering it with foil (but don’t block the vents on top) and then you can connect to the faster bands, and take the foil off. This might be necessary for people who have only the same signal available pretty much everywhere in their house and can’t reduce it, even temporarily through placement.

What I lack in experience though, being retired and having time, before I got the 5G gateway and this service was even available in my area, I watched dozens of videos, and tried to read all the articles and about the experiences of people setting it up and using it.

Not only did I want to see patterns in people’s experiences how to get the best speed and signal I could in my situation, I thought it would be nice to help others starting out, that maybe have busy lives and aren’t retired with so much time to be reading about the experiences of others.

What I found in my reading of the experiences of others is that there are certain general patterns, like faster speeds as you get closer to a tower. Or people that connect to any B band paired to n41, usually get better speeds than people who get the B band paired to n71.

However, there are exceptions all over the place also, like people who have really bad connections who are less than a mile from the tower where they get the desirable n41 pairing. And some people with 200+ download speeds who are more than a few miles from a tower.

There are also people who get download speeds averaging over 100 for a few months, and then it  stops and they can’t get a good speed again and turn in their gateway.

Conversely, I’ve read of people who got low speeds on the first day of use, maybe 40 download, but then on the second day their speeds were doubled, to 80. One person had the n41 installed on their tower and their speed went way up.

I’ve read of some of the variables involved in the installation of new equipment, like it may take them time to tune the equipment (transceivers and antennas), and get the backhaul working properly. Backhaul is the connection between the tower and wireless equipment with the high speed, high capacity lines like fiber that connect to the internet through a substation or larger station.

In other words, it isn’t just a matter of sticking the new equipment up in a few hours, turning it on, and bang, fast speeds for everyone. You can see the evolution of this on youtube by watching people, a year ago, very close to new installations of 5G, and they were getting speeds in the 50 to 100 download area, and a year later people who are close to towers can get between 200 and 600. Sometimes when the installation is new, like a few days old, the speed isn’t fast. 

I read an article about a tiny town locally where only 30% of the residents can get any cell signal at all, and it is only if they have expensive boosters. The poorer people in town want a cell signal and from the time the town council approves getting a tower, it will take 4 years for the a company to build that small tower. This was a recent article. There are some residents who are objecting to the tower being unsightly.

But to your problems...it could be a tuning issue. The companies have their own challenges with a new technology like 5G. And there’s an unknown in this I would very much like to know. That is, in the first wave of 100,000 users of T mobile home internet, how many found the service functional enough to keep. Is it 50%? Is it 90%?

And then there are the various standards of users, like the person who gets over 300 download, and for whom it is $30+ cheaper than their cable, but it’s totally unacceptable because it doesn’t work with Hulu. What I would say to those people is I understand your priorities, but maybe you should have spent an hour or two looking into this service before you ordered it, you would have found that it doesn’t work for Hulu.

But that’s not your situation or the rest of us. It’s the first year of their rollout, and we are all taking a risk, being the first ones in our neighborhoods in many cases to get this, in the case of rural areas.

Sure, it’s got to be massively disappointing, especially for people who have such problems like yours, but weren’t miles and miles from a tower or towers in your case.

For me, I expected a possibility of being disappointed, because my 4G phone sometimes gets only one bar, and my 3G phone used to drop calls unless I went outside. Instead, I’m relieved and delighted I get such good speed (average download of 90, never below 35), and I haven’t gotten a one bar signal even once on the gateway. I get a steady three bars when the gateway is in the window, and two bars that work well in a few other places, the best of the two-bar spots being below the window.

And the window I use happens to be the one that is closest to the tower 5 miles away, where there is only one wall of my chicken wire and stucco (faux adobe) house to get to the signal through if it is below the window.The rest of the house shields me from connecting to the tower 10 miles away in another direction where I would probably get a slow speed. 

I presume that T mobile had enough success among their first 100,000 users, one-third which was rural with two-thirds city, that they will continue their expansion plans with 5G home internet.

A year from now more people will have 5G phones, and they won’t be the first in their neighborhoods finding out if T mobile home internet works for them.

About what you said at the end, that it all costs money to try. I agree it is a bad situation.

One commenter who was trying T mobile home internet, said that when he discontinued his high-speed cable service, they sent him an offer to reconnect for $20/month for one year. He was paying $110/month. So he’s going to keep both his services, and see if his T mobile will get better maybe. Right now it was working well for a while, but started glitching out. He has that luxury.

Those kinds of offers are sometimes available to city and suburban people, but never to people in rural areas. As I have mentioned before, I was considering Starlink, but then the $500 for equipment and $100/month, keeping snow off the satellite dish in winter, slower speeds in the rain. I thought I’d wait.

T mobile has an offer for certain models of  iphone, that customers with any phone plan can download a special T mobile app and use T mobile’s service for one month free, just to see how it is in their area. No signing up for anything, giving out credit card info or anything.

I consider your situation and story to be among the 10% worst cases, probably. But when you consider that 5G was hardly anywhere a year ago, and now it is all over, almost, even though there are pockets where it won’t work or it’s terrible, maybe in 6 months that will change.

In 2001, I was living in a more isolated area than I am now, and there was talk of the “last-mile” connectivity for rural users about a new wireless technology WiMax. For 8 years they were talking about it as a wireless solution for rural users, and it never went commercial in the US at all.  

5G is different. 5G is going to only get better and better from a technology standpoint. From a practical standpoint through, maybe with more people crowding the towers, that could still be a problem. But that shouldn’t be the problem for rural users, only city users.

I think it would be nice if T mobile would at least tell you that if in a few months, they get the issues worked out in your area and speeds are up, they give you the offer of trying it free for a month, and if you like it, the $50 price, if that’s what you were paying before. But they probably don’t do stuff like that.

I felt like I was in the clutches of telephone companies decades ago, up until I ditched my landline. This is the first time I’m the one doing the clutching, hanging on to this amazing 5G service I get, hoping it continues through the future months and years.

Tim… thank you for sharing your insights in your post! I have been having a similar issue and your post is the only thing I found that directly addresses the problem. You are a scholar and a gentleman!

In my case, my secondary signal drops from time to time. When that happens my connection is basically useless. At that point, I run a continuous ping [ping www.google.com -t] and see ping spikes that always look the same. They build up over 4 pings and then drop back down. Something like this:

ping 1: 78ms

ping 2: 245ms

ping 3: 679 ms

ping 4: 1084 ms

ping 5: 84 ms

ping 6: 455 ms

ping 7: 872 ms

ping 8: timed out

After a while, magically, the signal will stabilize and reconnect on the secondary signal and all my pings are sub 100ms.

What I don’t understand is why the secondary signal drops, at all. Why not just stay connected?

Any insights on that?

Thanks again!!

Thank you for the suggestions. My firewall has already been neutered so I think I can eliminate that.

Its harder for me to move my router around for reasons I can’t disclose here. Lol. But, I think your point is well taken. There must be something happening with stability in my signal that is making the router drop my 5g band. I will experiment with that. Hopefully, if I figure it out, I will remember to come on here and update the thread.

Also, I’m very glad to hear that you have a stable, strong signal. I bet you are so happy! I know I will be if I can get it to stabilize. I have had CenturyLink DSL for years and OMG…. torture! Of course you had dial up so I can’t complain. I mean seriously… how is dial up still a thing? :)))

Thanks for responding!

I tend to agree the download speed of one device or another could have no bearing on the matter. The radios and antenna configurations could be very different the same as drivers etc… but as a reference point for trouble shooting having multiple devices did help here. The reporting by the software and/or the LED panel on top of the Nokia router are not very impressive. The signal strength indicator is just a quick reference so sure it is probably not sufficient. It does take effort and attention to optimize the placement of the router. I would speculate that the current location of the router in the middle of the house may have something to do with the signal bounce off surfaces in the house. It does seem crazy wrong that having it in the window with direct line of sight to the tower would not provide a better reception. It is easy to overlook screens that are not nylon or in one odd case here I discovered my wife and daughter were pulling down the “metal” blind inside the glass door which totally shielded the router. They did it to themselves but did not think about the aluminum blind between the glass when using it to darken the room. 

More testing with long extension cord today.

Found another spot that today is working ok 100 down that’s all I need if it says that way.

For sure tuning the can makes a big diff so you do have to test, rotate, test, rotate…

Nothing about this device makes any sense really but in the end all I care is can it supply me with what I need for internet.

Also been doing some reading and at one point I had 500+ down so that means I had to have an N41 signal right? But looking at all the cell maps there is only 1 tower in my area registered with N41 and really it’s to far I think 5 miles. So now I wonder how did I get that speed with no towers in the area that would support it? I wonder it TM is upgrading the closer towers and was testing when I caught that speed?

Hey timsw, et. al.,

(I you want to skip my intro - go down to “=====”)

I’ll join the club of reporting here.

First, I have been programming since 1968 - my have things changed.

Also, I am a ham radio guy - “extra class” (3 rd level license).

I also have a brother who was 30 years a Verizon network guy last number of years in VOIP.

I thought I knew something - until I met this device ...

I have lived in a house in a reception “hole” for ever.  Things good up the street in one direction, good down the street in another direction - just not at my house.

I got t-mobile in 1998 (actually it one of the companies it acquired later).

I have lived with having to go outside or to the top of my 3 story house to make a call.

Finally I got a t-mobile “cell spot” which was a total savior. I good finally be in any place in the house and it worked.

But my internet has always been  AT&T - dialup, then DSL, then U-Verse. ALWAYS lousy - but my only other choice was more expensive and super unreliable Comcast.

So the best I ever had was UVerse 10M down and 1.2M up. Yeah - and for $60 / mo.

So I jumped all over this deal.

It is definitely a keeper because at worst I am doing 6 times better than UVerse and $10 cheaper a month.

=====================

BUT - TO MY EXPERIENCE WITH 5G21-12W-A.

Top floor - windows N/S/E

Mid floor - windows N/S

basement - window S

Now line of sight to nothing - hill N/S/E.  West house 20 ft away, trees, etc.

Brick house N, siding S/E/W.

all floors, “about” the same” - but getting 2 of 4 bands - varying from time to time.

pairs are bands are:

b2 / n71

b2 / n41

b12 / b2

b66 / n71

b66 / n41

b12 is seldom seen.  b2/n71 is most common.

ALWAYS 2 bars of Five on the unit.

Just taking B2 ones and looking at

Location      Direction  RSSI   RSRQ   RSRP   SINR

Basement    S              -83      -11         -113     8.2

Ground Flr   S              -76      -11         -107     6.3

Top Flr         S              -73      -12         -105     6.8

NOTE - the SINR 8.2 in the basement - MAKES NO SENSE - especially on same band/tower and facing a thick woods and hill.

But just showing readings from the basement and internet speeds from computer on network plugged into the can’s ethernet port, taken at various times of day over 2 days:

Band          Up       Down

b2 / n71      112      14.6

                    89        7.2

                    177      20.2

                    171      17.8

                    126      18.7

                    174       23.1

                    143       15

                    148       19.6

b2 / n41       166       7.4

                    205.3    6.5

I am assuming difference must be loads on the cell tower(s). 

I get no better speeds - on average - at ANY of the other locations.

And yeah - the UI’s are pretty bad.  Lack of settings worse.

The lack of making the 2.4GHz Wifi to anything but 1/6/11 is really bad as I have signals IN THE HOUSE from neighbors nearly as strong as mine, and the best channel is 8 - but cannot use.

So I have external ASUS router - and using wifi from it.

That’s my story …

Steve

Itinkeralot,

Thanks for the reply.

I am in a NW suberb of Atlanta - outside the I285 perimeter.

I have looked into the MIMO antennas and getting into the box - yeah - as a ham that was irresistible to avoid looking into.

But currently - it seems - I am fine with 50M+ down and 10+ up.  I am not a gamer or streamer - and I have an advanced antenna (necessary) in the attic for TV and MythTV as my VCR - the same box running Xubuntu Linux has been at it for 11 years now … and has only required that I replaced the external video decoder box (because the first one failed).

Never had cable …

I DO appreciate pushing me to cell mapper - had not looked into it yet.

Interesting results:

Nearest 5G tower - 3 miles to West.  I have no west window.

All the 5G towers are basically next to I75.  Which handles a TRMENDOUS amount of traffic - 11+ lanes EACH DIRECTION when it hits I 285.  Ridiculous.

There is a CLUSTER of 3 tower at a park nearby  0.7 miles.

BUT there is a hill between us. A direct line to tower from my upper floor would be about 50 down in the dirt or so …

But sitting at my desk IN THE BASEMENT - no windows - my phone shows a B12 connection to a tower 0.76 miles - to the SW.  This is the only one Ihave been able to identify.

At the basement window I am connected to a B2 but I cannot find it by PCI, or any other number I have found.  Cellmapper wants not accept the 7 digit CellID from OpenSignal - and I cannot seem to make it lock onto the one that the T-Mobile can is seeing.

Unfortunately the CAN only gives PCI, Band, EARFCN.

And try as I might, I have not been able to located that tower on Cellmapper.

Also - it seems that the 3 programs I have to try to find this stuff - all disagree to some extant and worse they use deferent sets of identifiers.

For example I have found no one else that uses the eNB ID that cellmapper uses.

So at this point I still have no idea where the b2, b66, n41 and n71 I sometimes hit are.