I started having issues a couple of days ago and when I called they stated that the towers in my area are being upgraded. I asked how long this would take as I had no service for several days. They stated 3 to 4 weeks! How is this acceptable in this day and age for technology upgrades to takes weeks and deny service to customers? I should have said this is a safety issue as I could not reliable make calls and if I had an emergency how could I expect to get help. This is a sad state of affairs T-Mobile.
When they originally upgraded the towers in my area, it took almost five weeks. It does seemed like a pretty long time to me, too, but I don’t know all that’s involved with upgrading the towers.
Can anyone whose tower has been upgraded advise if there was a difference In service? I live by the airport in Charlotte and my T-Mobile internet service has always just been OK. I’ve never had more than 2 bars of service on my internet or my phone, which is fine for me as I’m not into gaming or anything really involved that requires a lot of data usage. But I’m wondering if this tower upgrade will help with the service.
Userlevel 7
+8
When T-Mobile engineers state a tower is being upgraded it really is a vague statement. They might be upgrading older gear with new 5G technology but this really does not define how much work is being done. If they have a plan for multiple cells for coverage in different areas it could take a bit longer for the stated “upgrade”. When the 5G was deployed here it was done with n71 in our area. Recently the coverage just changed and a n41 signal appeared. Then the next day it was gone. Then several days later tada the n41 signal returned. It was a total surprise that this rural area went from n71 to n41. It is hard to say how long an upgrade may take. For the Charlotte area by the airport it might be a bit more involved. The longer n71 frequency has more distance and better penetration than the n41 millimeter frequency but does not have the speed capability. I have seen the RSRP, signal strength with the n41 quite a bit less than the n71 frequency BUT the RSRQ and SINR improved and I have seen some impressive speed results. The bandwidth here pretty much doubled even with the lesser signal strength. So it comes down to signal quality and less noise is really important for performance. If the signal is clean they there are fewer damaged packets and fewer retransmissions so performance is better.
A tower upgrade may improve service even if you don’t see a stronger signal. If you see a cleaner better quality of signal that will most likely improve matters. As long as the signal penetrates the building and environment sufficiently to provide a good or excellent signal quality things should improve. OK so that also will be dependent upon the routing paths upstream as well. Every environment is a little different.
I was a bit skeptical about the n41 upgrade here since I have seen numerous conversations where tower upgrades started out great only to go very bad. So far things have gone well but a rural vs urban solution are two different animals. There are more variables to consider in a highly populous area.
Userlevel 1
My service has been terrible at my home ever since the merger. Service is on and off since March. I’ve been told numerous times that it’s because of “tower upgrades” but I was told by a TMobile rep that the Sprint tower closest to me was taken out of service, resulting in a poor signal from a more distant TMobile tower.
Despite the poor service the bill keeps coming.
If there was a viable alternative in my area I would jump at it.
I’m hoping for a class-action lawsuit to force the executives who mastermind these mergers to be accountable to the consumers. They place poorly paid and poorly trained foreign workers in between them and the customer. They’re greedy cowards and should have to pay.
Userlevel 1
Now it’s October and my service from TMobile has disappeared completely. I was still getting the old “tower upgrade” line of crap from customer service. I’m now with ATT. Good riddance to TMobile. Dishonest, and no service. Great Combo. Where’s the FCC when you need them? So much for the rural initiative.
The tower I originally connected to (1 mile away, line-of-sight) gave me all the speed I needed. Then something happened and my speeds were slower than DSL. I struggled for 3 weeks, called tech support, and finally found the one spot in my house where I can connect to a tower 5 miles away that delivers over 200 Mbps downloads and 10 Mbps uploads,
I learned that sometimes you need to connect to a more distant tower (if possible!) to get decent speed.
I’m glad to see it’s not just me, but I’m so disappointed that T-Mobile refuses to even be transparent about it.
I’ve filed complaints with the FCC and FTC. Maybe they’ll be required to pay another $90 million for non-performance on a contract. This is super grifty.
We had seriously great 5G in a small town. Service has been down with note from t-mobile about tower maintenance. Turning off all services while doing this. Never happened with Verizon. What gives guys? What if we have an emergency while service is off. We have great local wifi but wifi calling is not available on our phones apparently. Hoping this is a really short problem.
you might opt to contact TMO either through calling in or through one of their social media platforms and put in a network ticket..the social media route lands you with tier 2 support instead of the call in tier 1 support agents.
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