Has anyone tried Tmobile Home 5G?

[Owsleygarcia95]

So I just got a PC for the first time in a while, and am looking at all my options for faster internet. Unfortunately, AT&T only offers 25M down where I live (even though I've literally seen them installing fiber for years). In reality I'm getting 3 consistently, 5 on a good day. Really don't want to pay for starlink. Verizon 5G is a no go yet. The Tmobile map on their website claims I have coverage for their fastest type of 5G. 

 

Just wondering if anyone has actually used this. Currently paying almost $70 for complete crap from AT&T. Am also wondering if anyone has been throttled by Tmobile for using a VPN while torrenting large files. Have checked out reddit but can't really find any good answers. Would love to hear anyone's experience using this for internet. Thanks

[Brando212]

guessing a standard ISP isn't an option for you if you're considering an over the air option.

 

I haven't used t-mobile's home network myself but I have a friend that's used it because they're in a similar situation with no lines run for local are ISP. I'd say it's decent enough if you're in a proper coverage area; heck, it's probably better than Cox's and other's base plans as a good comparison.

 

I can't remember what their speed test looks like at the moment but I can say I can game from their network just fine including streaming my games so let that be a good perspective for you.

 

 

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I do believe they don't lock you in a contract so if things don't work out then it should be fairly easy to back out and return the router.

[Owsleygarcia95]

4 minutes ago, Brando212 said:

guessing a standard ISP isn't an option for you if you're considering an over the air option.

 

I haven't used t-mobile's home network myself but I have a friend that's used it because they're in a similar situation with no lines run for local are ISP. I'd say it's decent enough if you're in a proper coverage area; heck, it's probably better than Cox's and other's base plans as a good comparison.

 

I can't remember what their speed test looks like at the moment but I can say I can game from their network just fine including streaming my games so let that be a good perspective for you.

 

 

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I do believe they don't lock you in a contract so if things don't work out then it should be fairly easy to back out and return the router.

Thanks. Yeah AT&T and a company called EarthLink that uses AT&Ts infrastructure are the only standard options here. I think Xfinity too, but I've heard that is garbage. I'm considering just getting it to try for a month or 2 and downloading 24/7 to see if they throttle it. 

[will0hlep]

I use a 5G home hub from Virgin Media in the UK. I've found that It typically offers good speeds if placed well within your home, however I've found that the ping is typically high/unstable, and it seems to have more down time than a traditional broadband connection.

[Donut417]

7 minutes ago, Brando212 said:

guessing a standard ISP isn't an option for you if you're considering an over the air option.

The OP has AT&T DSL. In many cases 5G is better. 
 

14 minutes ago, Owsleygarcia95 said:

Would love to hear anyone's experience using this for internet. Thanks

Don’t have their home internet but do have cellular service, which has gotten better over the 5+ years I been with them. Have also been considering TMobile home internet because Comcast is a bunch of bastards. I think they will give you 15 days to test it out before you are charged. You can cancel any time. 

[jaslion]

1 minute ago, Owsleygarcia95 said:

Thanks. Yeah AT&T and a company called EarthLink that uses AT&Ts infrastructure are the only standard options here. I think Xfinity too, but I've heard that is garbage. I'm considering just getting it to try for a month or 2 and downloading 24/7 to see if they throttle it. 

They will

 

Its usually in the small ***** stuff.

 

From multiple users reporting here it is decent BUT you are ALWAYS low priority. With this I mean phones will always get higher priority than you so during busy times speeds will vary a lot

[rcmaehl]

I'm 700ft from the closest T-Mobile tower. However, I was only getting 200 max and that's because it was stuck using 4G bands.

 

If you have a t-mobile phone, run a speedtest on the tower before getting home internet and don't expect anything more than that.

 

If you try to cancel, you'll constantly get told they're "upgrading towers" and to "wait 2 more weeks"

[Owsleygarcia95]

23 minutes ago, micha_vulpes said:

I did.

I can see the tower, the only tower it can connect to, out my window.

 

Peak download speeds were pretty good, I got 200-300mb/s pretty consistent if you were downloading large files.

 

The problem was latency. It was anywhere from 100ms to 500ms normally, but would spike to 3000+ multiple times a day. Lots of time out errors, ISP / DNS related issues. I had to reboot the modem nearly daily, and it had a hard time keeping me connected to my work vpn.

 

It actually performed worse than the 6mb DSL I had previously.

 

I ended up cancelling it and getting a same price cable internet plan ( 100/10) which is the fastest available here. But it's ping times are 35-50ms and it never has issues.

 

The 5g home internet is only viable if you have no other options imo

Well since I'm literally getting 3-5mb down I'm considering getting it for a couple months to get a decent amount of stuff downloaded at some point. Was it easy to cancel? Do you remember of there were any fees? I read the terms of service and it sounded like there were none as long as you returned the equipment. Just wondering if that's actually true?

[AbydosOne]

My friend and my parents (because of my friend, incidentally) both have T-mobile 5G home internet and seem content with it (and they both live in rural Michigan). I'll have a better feel for it when I go home in a couple weeks to try it for myself.

[Inception9269]

55 minutes ago, Owsleygarcia95 said:

So I just got a PC for the first time in a while, and am looking at all my options for faster internet. Unfortunately, AT&T only offers 25M down where I live (even though I've literally seen them installing fiber for years). In reality I'm getting 3 consistently, 5 on a good day. Really don't want to pay for starlink. Verizon 5G is a no go yet. The Tmobile map on their website claims I have coverage for their fastest type of 5G. 

 

Just wondering if anyone has actually used this. Currently paying almost $70 for complete crap from AT&T. Am also wondering if anyone has been throttled by Tmobile for using a VPN while torrenting large files. Have checked out reddit but can't really find any good answers. Would love to hear anyone's experience using this for internet. Thanks

I've been using T-Mobile's 5G internet for almost a year now, and I have had mostly great experiences with it.

 

A bit of a backstory, when I first moved to my house in 2020 I got Spectrum, with me paying for 400mbps speed, and for the most part things were great... Up until the last 3 months or so that I had them. Their network in my area had degraded so bad, where I was almost always getting speeds in the 10's, even single digits at times. I was using my own modem & router, but even after switching to theirs my situation never improved. I had a guy out at my house 2 or 3 times and my situation never got resolved. One of them told me that they actually flew him out (from somewhere in the Northeast, with me being in Illinois) cause apparently the lines in our city were so unbelievably bad that they had to bring in folks from other parts to fix it.

 

That is what led to me giving T-Mobile's internet a shot, and it was night and day compared to how things were with Spectrum. Wireless internet speeds tend to vary, but I consistently get between 200 and even 600mbps speeds, with the 300 range being the most common for me at least. One guy above mentioned horrible latency, but he probably has either a bad modem or his location isn't ideal.

 

As far as VPN's and torrenting are concerned, I have experienced some oddity's with that, with me using PIA as my VPN. The likely issue is just the VPN server I was connected to, cause some VPN servers block or hinder torrenting.

 

My only real gripe with their internet is their modem is kind of locked down, where aside from changing the wifi password, you can't modify anything inside of it. For the most part though this isn't really an issue, but for me with my unraid Plex server it's infuriating, cause I can't get my Plex server to be accessible outside my network cause the modem doesn't allow me to change any of the settings.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Owsleygarcia95 said:

Thanks. Yeah AT&T and a company called EarthLink that uses AT&Ts infrastructure are the only standard options here. I think Xfinity too, but I've heard that is garbage. I'm considering just getting it to try for a month or 2 and downloading 24/7 to see if they throttle it. 

Just go with the lowest speed tier on Xfinity. 

[Owsleygarcia95]

21 minutes ago, billorwill said:

Just go with the lowest speed tier on Xfinity. 

I'm assuming this is sarcasm lol

[Owsleygarcia95]

20 minutes ago, micha_vulpes said:

I also tried it side by side the old ISP for the first month. It was superb during that time, and until the next billed cycled ( so for the first two months)

There was a honeymoon period in which it measurably performed better - which lead me to cancel the initial DSL. I was able to game with it more or less (50-90ms), and it did not really have any issues. THEN the latency then took a dump from months 3-13.

 

As far as my connection, I was on the upper end of the SNR range it can even handle. Only 800 meters as the crow flies, UN-obstructed to the tower direct LoS with my modem in a non tinted transom window in the second story at a ground elevation of about 18 feet. Great Connection on the 4g LTE Command and control bands, and pretty stellar connection to the 5G band.

 

Went through two (3 if you count my own) of the Nokia Fast-Miles, and one of the Square Arcadyan modems. None of which had any impact. I also tried to purchase my own Nokia Fast Mile (unbranded Retail version) and it would not connect using the SIM tmobile provided at all.

 

The t mobile modems also are super locked down, and you cant really change anything about them - they have custom firmware too that disabled data on the type C ports, disabled the auxiliary battery backup port, and so on.  I had to use my own router to even get my repeaters and print servers on the network.

 

It was for me 100% a prioritization issue : your phone would function fine, even when the modem was at a crawl. Remember it cares not just about the 5G data band, but it uses the 4g band for timing and some band aggregation. Lots of cell phone use in the area can still de-prioritize home internet even if they are not on 5g.

 

As far as the VPN - sadly I had no control of the domain I was hitting or options for working around it. It was for a work based HVD, and required for me to work from home. Now whats odd is it worked more or less fine the first month or two, but then it got to have trouble allowing the connection. IF I would use my phone as the access point it worked fine, but not the connections through the FWN gateway.

 

I also had issues with your location provided by the network just being all over the place ( IE anything that Geofenced you would have issues as your IP could randomly change at any time and place you basically anywhere in the service region. Mine often said I was either 1 state away in North Carolina, or would say I was in California... across the country. I had to disable automatic system date/time in window 10 as well since it would keep changing based on where the IP resolved.)

Thanks for the detailed explanation. I think I might just use it for a couple of months to fill up most of my storage. At my current data rate I'm looking at well over 200 days, maybe more like 250, to download 10 TB. I only have a fast 2 TB SSD currently, kind of just waiting to see how much further SSD and HDD prices come down before buying any more. But I checked to Tmobile tower location, and it's pretty close. Thinking I can probably pull alot of TB in 2 months when I get the storage lol.

[Guest]

5 hours ago, Owsleygarcia95 said:

I'm assuming this is sarcasm lol

Nope no sarcasm. They might run fiber from the telephone pole to your house. Maybe ask around your neighborhood first. A lot of people who claim things are garbage barely have any computer skills. 

[Owsleygarcia95]

9 minutes ago, billorwill said:

Nope no sarcasm. They might run fiber from the telephone pole to your house. Maybe ask around your neighborhood first. A lot of people who claim things are garbage barely have any computer skills. 

Ok it's worth a shot. Thanks

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, Owsleygarcia95 said:

Ok it's worth a shot. Thanks

https://www.dslreports.com/reviews   You'll be able to read reviews about all major ISP's at that site. 

[Donut417]

25 minutes ago, billorwill said:

Nope no sarcasm. They might run fiber from the telephone pole to your house. Maybe ask around your neighborhood first. A lot of people who claim things are garbage barely have any computer skills. 

The only way Comcast/Xfinity is running Fiber to the house is if you pay $500 install, $500 Activation and $299 a month with a 3 year contract. That's the price of Fiber from them, they have made it very clear, they are sticking to Docsis Coax Internet for the foreseeable future, they are going big on Docsis 4.0. 

 

Furthermore they have a 1.2 TB data cap in most areas and on top of all that raise prices once or twice a year like clock work. Customer service is non existent. Employees will lie to you. 

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

The only way Comcast/Xfinity is running Fiber to the house is if you pay $500 install, $500 Activation and $299 a month with a 3 year contract. That's the price of Fiber from them, they have made it very clear, they are sticking to Docsis Coax Internet for the foreseeable future, they are going big on Docsis 4.0. 

 

Furthermore they have a 1.2 TB data cap in most areas and on top of all that raise prices once or twice a year like clock work. Customer service is non existent. Employees will lie to you. 

I didn't realize Docsis Coax was different than fiber. Thanks. I've never chatted with an ISP employee that didn't lie. lol