t-monile home internet is barely providing basic data speeds sometimds.

I’m curious to see your answers.  I have experienced the same over the last month.  We’ve had the home internet box for months, and it worked wonders over my old provider.  So much so, we were able to start using a streaming tv service.  But not now.  The download speed has dropped tremendously and at times it will just disconnect entirely.  Not just with the streaming service, it does it with a phone or a tablet as well.  Never did that before, and nothing has changed.  I have gone through the reset process, the unplugging and so forth, and the problem remains.  I guess that unlimited data isn’t so unlimited after all.

Just don’t know what to do about it.  

007Bond, how would I go about seeing what bands I’m connected to?  I’m not a techie and don’t know a lot about this.  The tower, however, is right next door to me.  Less than 200 yards away.  I’d like to do more than vent.  I’m not real keen on calling support and being on the phone for 30 minutes for them to tell me to unplug it and plug it back in, but I guess whatever I have to do.  If anybody here can offer advice let me know what info you need.  I’m just frustrated that for almost 6 months it worked flawlessly, now my download speed and connectivity won’t last longer than 10 minutes of streaming tv.  Something has changed and it’s nothing that I have done.  Thanks for whatever help you can offer.   

Thanks.  I’ll follow up on that when I get home.  I appreciate your time.  

Quite literally the same thing happens to me.

My god I’m not the only one then? I’m going to post my details too if any of you want to help me figure it out because after a month of ridiculous speeds (0.12-0.3mbps) from 9 am to 10 pm, 2 engineering tickets, multiple 5G High speed gateway router exchanges (I’m on my third one!) I’m literally about to give up on t-mobile home internet and look for spectrum - this hasn’t been an issue prior on the 4G LTE gateway (apart from needing an Eero Mesh to connect >6 devices that is). Isn’t 5G WIFI gateway meant to be better!? 

This JUST happened to me starting Monday of this week…. I WAS connected to the T-Mobile tower (was Sprint) only 1 mile away and getting VERY high speeds then it disappears Monday….  They are converting Sprint towers over right now and I am currently connected to a tower over 10 miles away…. for the time being……. you need to run Speedtest (app on your phone) and AS it starts to run the download test and the meter arrow starts to move start to rotate your gateway and see if it starts to ‘jump’ in speed….. run it several times and do this over and over….  it has 4 antennas inside and rotation affects where it is looking outside….. also try unplugging it and while it on try moving it to different locations in your house and you need to test next to various windows each time…. there is a small display at the top of the unit and to activate it just tap on it lightly and you may have to swipe it left or right a couple of times to find the connection strength ‘bars’ ….they are very bright and may be a bit hard to see…..  at each location you can slowly rotate (like ¼ turn at a time) and see what you get…. once you think you have found a better spot plug it in and wait about a minute or so for it to come back on and after another 2 minutes let it finish up connecting and THEN redo your speed test(s) ….. If you happen to have an upstairs then by all means locate it up there…..  there ARE kits available online from a company called Waveform that well let you add an external high gain set of antennas to the unit and you can then pull in signals many miles away….. works very well by the way….. and there are videos on YouTube these days about that...

I’ve had essentially the same experience. T-Mobile has essentially oversold their 5G home service that went from strong in the Spring to non-functional by August. Now they just claim they are congested and have no intention of expanding their capacity to meet the demand they sold. They say speeds of less than 10, or even 1, out of the 150 they promised, are fine during normal waking hours, and if you don’t like it you can leave. Pretty sure that’s call theft and fraud. 

You are likely dealing with Wi-Fi interference if you are using the built in wifi6 router . Turn those off and get  a nice mesh system. Trust me I thought I was gonna go bonkers until I did it myself . Also these things thermal throttle with heavy use. 5g modems get 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥. Buy a p.c Fan with feet and a USB power plug  120mm and plug it in the back then set the modem on top . 

Remove the BATTERY as well from the bottom. Great videos out there on why you should and how. Takes 5 min and no skill but taking 4 screws out. Battery overheats> modem gets too 🔥🔥> thermal throttles>>> crappy speeds.the end.

I have the same problems. Thinking about going back to Comcast.

If you’ve tried T-MOBILE support and have gotten nowhere…..

Understand first and foremost, if your signal is low, your 5G service will be poor. We engineer types call this “garbage in gets you garbage out.”

Now regarding the T-MOBILE internet equipment on the towers, it operates on what T-MOBILE calls 5G-UC, which is basically a “mid-band” frequency that carries a lot of bandwidth but is not as fast as “high band.” But frankly, for home internet mid-band is all you need. I have learned in my area that the tower equipment for HOME INTERNET is not the same as is used for mobile phone service, and that T-MOBILE does not over-subscribe the service. This means if you get good signal, you’ll get great performance.

After signal improvements I commonly get greater than the rated bandwidth for the service except during peak TV viewing time (when everyone is streaming). During peak times, I get near 90% of the rated bandwidth of 115Mbps down and 23Mbps up. This is tremendously better than the local yo-yo ISP provider in my area.

The simple solution is to get a 5G cell signal booster, is good for metro and suburban applications, but not good for rural applications. Here is a company that sells several, but you may be able to get one from T-Mobile customer service for free, see https://www.surecall.com/signal-booster/cat/home-office/?GA_network=s&GA_device=c&GA_campaign=359540784&GA_adgroup=1316116102395667&GA_target=&GA_placement=&GA_creative=&GA_extension=8177657646064&GA_keyword=surecall%20flare&GA_loc_physical_ms=73538&GA_landingpage=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.surecall.com%2Fsignal-booster%2Fcat%2Fhome-office%2F&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=359540784&utm_keyword=surecall%20flare&msclkid=63d026ddde731514e44d44d7383784ef&utm_term=surecall%20flare&utm_content=Surecall%20Flare

For rural users, it gets more difficult, read on:

I live on lakefront property and had similar issues with both T-Mobile internet and digital TV reception issues. The root cause is simple; signal interference from a line of trees. Signal would get worse during spring and summer, and would improve during colder months, likely due to less tree leaves “attenuating,” aka reducing the signal quality. The solution was two fold: an antenna mast that I mounted to the back of my home that helped me realize 30 feet elevation, and 2: an outdoor antenna system for the T-Mobile device / high gain antenna for my Tivo DTV receiver. The antenna mast is heavy duty and designed for rural applications. The antenna mast was purchased from Amazon, see https://www.amazon.com/Easy-Up-Telescoping-Mast-TM-50-U-95/dp/B010GAQ3K4/ref=sxin_15_ac_d_rm?ac_md=3-2-YW50ZW5uYSB0b3dlcg%3D%3D-ac_d_rm_rm_rm&crid=1ZRVF69Y6MB43&cv_ct_cx=antenna+mast&keywords=antenna+mast&pd_rd_i=B010GAQ3K4&pd_rd_r=2f058b48-bce3-4b8a-84cd-f75aeef0bcd5&pd_rd_w=wAMTe&pd_rd_wg=L1ZHs&pf_rd_p=5fdda09e-d732-41f0-8362-9e3e115c3771&pf_rd_r=TF9FQV9FBB671GTZX44A&psc=1&qid=1644881211&sprefix=antenna+ma%2Caps%2C270&sr=1-3-12d4272d-8adb-4121-8624-135149aa9081, the antenna system for the T-Mobile device, see https://www.waveform.com/a/b/guides/hotspots/t-mobile-5g-gateway/ , and instructions from

Mind you, this is a technical video. Get someone technical to help you if it is beyond your skills. For DTV, I purchased this monster antenna and mounted it to the same antenna mast  3 feet above the 5G antenna, see : https://www.amazon.com/pingbingding-Antenna-Outdoor-Amplified-Mounting/dp/B07DGYGGSF/ref=sr_1_15?keywords=150+mile+range+tv+antenna&qid=1644881882&sr=8-15 .

In closing, I hope I have brought to this discussion some information to help those in need.

-Hank

@hank has some good stuff about boosting your signal, but my router reports very good signal and it worked great for the first few weeks...  now pretty much unusable.  have they pushed out a bad firmware update or something????

I think I have a good outcome. Hope everyone else gets same from T-Mobile.

I was having same issues as many have voiced here.

Had service with good performance for about 8 mos and all of the sudden download speeds were garbage.

first call to support was 2 days ago. Frustrated with the rep reading from a script of hollow pleasantries. Had a slight bump in download speeds and hoped it would continue, but it did not.

called again today and was firm and direct - but respectful - in my communications with the rep, providing evidence from speedtest.net results that something in T-mobiles network admin and settings was affecting my service.

Rep said he would do some stuff, communicate with engineering and get back to me. He called back about three hours later and said they are still working on it and would be back in touch with me in the next 2-3 days.

as of this evening, i am getting the best network performance I’ve ever experienced at my house in northeast GA. Three speedtest.net results at 5pm, 8pm and 10pm have all been between 160-180mbps down and >53mbps up. And unless something very recently has changed, I’m in an LTE coverage area, not 5G.

I hope this improvement is stable and permanent, but as of right now very satisfied.

I’ve been dealing with download speeds of 1mbps to 3mbps since April 2022. before that we had 130mbps on download speeds for at least 2 years. Then they say there working on towers. The tower that we had good download speeds with was 6 miles away. Now they are tagging off At&T tower which is a half mile from us. Almost a year later and they still do not have it fixed. One day we had thought they fixed the problem, back up to 130mbps download. that lasted for a few hours. I have over 100 hours logged with tech support. SMH