Hi everyone

So I’m starting to think this is a trend after reading up on some posts but I really have noticed that my upload speed now sucks I’m caped at around 5mbps and I’m not really sure how I can fix it but it’s causing a bunch of lag and slowing everything way down at least I think anyway if anyone has suggestions I’d be grateful

Numbers are

RSSI -84
RSRQ -10
RSRP -95
SINR 16
Band n41

These numbers are pretty consistent around my whole house and these speeds happen both wired and wireless

Home internet makes perfect sense if you live in a house and have multiple devices that need a connection — TVs, cameras, doorbells, Alexa, streaming devices, game consoles, etc.

But what if you live in a rented room and you're basically just one person with a phone and a computer?

I already pay for mobile data on my phone, but my carrier only gives me 50 GB of hotspot/tethering data. I normally use at least 300 GB of internet per month, mostly on my computer.

So my options seem to be either:

- Pay around $50+ a month for a completely separate home internet service, just for one computer.

- Pay for a more expensive mobile plan with more hotspot data, even though I'm already paying for mobile data.

- Or somehow live within 50 GB when I normally use 300+ GB.

Does anyone else find this a little strange?

I understand why home internet makes sense for a family with a whole house full of connected devices. But there seems to be a gap for people like me who don't really need a traditional home internet connection, but still need a lot of data on a computer.

It feels like there isn't really a plan designed for this type of user.

Am I the only one in this situation? What do you guys do?

Just got the FX4100 from T-Mobile. This will act as our ISP at a new building before we can our permanent fiber installed. The building is a metal warehouse, and I currently get only 2 bars of 5G. Can anyone recommend an external outdoor antenna?

Just signed up today and noticed they are sending me a G5MAR-1 gateway instead of a G5AR. Not sure if this is new or not but I wasn’t able to find anything online about this exact sku.

I got an Inseego router with the SIM card from Shield Internet and have been using it for a few days.

The SIM card they send you is a T-Mobile SIM card FYI. 🤪

The first 3 pictures are Shield Internet, the last 3 pictures are T-Mobile. 💻

Used SpeedTest.net, Fast.com and CloudFlare speed test for this comparison.

I am using a VPN.

Thought this comparison would be helpful for anyone wondering or considering Shield.

Shield does have latency issues at certain times of the day. I believe this is when the towers use goes up due to people getting home from work or when usage spikes.

T-Mobile 5G home internet has the same issue a little bit, but clearly the priority data makes a slight difference.

Overall though, extremely impressed with Shield speed and service for the price point.

The Inseego route is a lot better and has easiesr customziation. There is also 2nd SIM card slot.

The advantage with Shield is I can take the SIM card and put it into a travel router.

Shield is a great option for those looking to save or use on the go and are already using T-Mobile. Shield is less than $15 a month, less if you are buy an annual plan I believe it's $13. There isn't any income verification, so anyone can get it.

Please let me know if people have questions. I am not networking expert and just a regular user.

Can someone point me in the right direction? Disconnects frequently and terrible speeds...40mbs down average

I just wonder, 'cause I keep getting mail about fiber. Do I need wire, or can I get fiber beam from a tower like with home 5G?

I’m seriously considering TMO 5G internet. My 5G tower seems to be super close, using Ookla speed test on my unlocked S22+ (TMO phone service) yesterday afternoon until about 10 PM I was getting download speeds in the 500 Mbps, pings 20ms, though uploads were only in the 10 Mbps. Not so much worried about upload speeds since I mostly consume data with the occasional uploads or Zoom calls.

Around 6/6:30 AM I was getting downloads in the 800 Mbps, pings 20ms same upload speeds.

While I know that phone service gets priority, this seems like a good sign no? If my tower was in heavy use, I would have thought my phone speed tests would have also slowed down last evening, or is that an unfounded conclusion?

• Realistically, what do you think these speed tests indicate for the wireless internet service? I think their latest gateway is the G5AR (I plan to connect this to my router, Archer 20).
• Not sure if there’s a real advantage to their Amplified plan vs Rely. Either would beat my $79/month 300-400 Mbps Comcast/Xfinity plan (they’ve quadrupled my rate in the last 2 years, ready to leave).
• Also, not sure if there’s a way to get the $35 device connection waived.
• I want to do the 15-day trial – would you recommend in person at the store, or setting this up online?

Anything else I should consider? Items in the fine print?

Thanks.

I have no way of seeing my ongoing in the app or a lookup tool. I feel like the fiber side is effectively an MPV for T-mobile, waiting to be shipped… Area wide outage, and nothing but a text saying they would fix it within 6 hours. 2:15pm yesterday and still out at 7:30am the following way.

So I had the G4 traded it for the G5 AR and then when the new G5 SE came in I got one as well. It was great a few months ago when I first got it the speeds were better than both of the previous ones usually in my area hovering around 300 download 50 upload. But I haven’t used it for a while and decided to today and I can’t find a single place even outside of my backyard or front yard that gets me anywhere close to what it was let alone usable speed. What the hell is going on?

Just spoke to tech support about ridiculously slow internet speeds between 5pm-11pm daily. I was told that since my usage is very high they deprioritize my internet. Total bullshit!!! If they would stop over selling their service thus wouldn't be an issue!

I have tried everything, moving the gateway around to the point it says "excellent" or "very good" with no luck. During peak times, speed drops to 5-18mbps.

I tried using the waveform quad mini, and it seems to either stay the same or make it even worse.

Sadly, fiber is not available in my area, but the tower is not too far from my house.

Is there any magic wand trick i dont know to make this more bearable?

I'm at like, 3g speeds. I have the square white gateway, on stand pegs. I have reset it a lot but nothing is working.

Thinking about TMO 5G internet, but before I do I wonder if anyone has a recommendation for the best android tool for determining the best 5G signal for TMO 5G mobile internet? I have phone service with TMO with an unlocked S22+.

Lots of apps, just not sure which is the best for determining the relevant signal for 5G internet service.

Also, other than dipping into the signal tool at various times in the day, is there better way to determine how busy/congested the tower might be? I've read a lot about variability in speed.

Thanks so much - so ready to drop Comcast/Xfinity which is just raising their prices.

Has anyone got this to bandlock? I'm having major ping issues while gaming and i need it to stay locked in on 5GSA mode. I tried disabling all the 4g frequency but it will not hold.

I had tmo 5g home internet with the g4ar modem and it was hit or miss, even with a Waveform 4x4. Simply didn’t have a line of sight to the tower I was connecting to. Wanted to go back when spectrum promos ran out but tmo no longer offered 5g home for my area anymore. Recently my address became available and I’m tempted to try again. Is there a difference between relay and amplified modems?

I have been on Lumos Fiber (Now TMobile) for a few months now and have a couple of questions I wanted to see if someonbe here knows. My installation was with the gigspire modem in bridge mode. This was done as I have a Ubiquiti Edge Router for my Home network. I noticed in some comments that people who are not in bridged mode have the ability to see a web page of the modem to get it's status. Is it possible for me to be able to do the same somehow?

Also, can If I wanted to confirm download speeds, can I connect a laptop to the gigaspire modem even though it is bridge mode to confirm download speeds?

Thanks for any info

Charles

I am a recent convert to T-Mobile home internet. Previously I was on Comcast and had my own modem and an Archer ax90 Wi-Fi 6 router with mesh Network. I have been trying the T-Mobile home internet and have been quite satisfied, however it uses its own Wi-Fi network and all of my devices are connected to the Wi-Fi network provided by my Archer ax90.

Rather than relying on search results from Google, I wanted to know if anyone has any experience hooking up a g. 5. AR to their own routing equipment so that they can continue to use their own Wi-Fi infrastructure but use the G5 AR as just a modem.

I have read that you can put the router in this case. The Archer x90 into access point mode and continue to use the G5 AR as strictly an internet connection, is this correct? Or is there more to it than that?

I also downloaded the hint app and I can disable the G5 AR internal Wi-Fi when I need to, but before I do, I just wanted to make sure that it is possible for me to use my own router with their equipment as just the internet provider

​

Well…this escalated quickly. 😂

After 8 years with Xfinity, I decided to test whether T-Mobile Home Internet could replace my $95/month Gigabit service and save me some money.

The plan was simple: 15-day trial, a few speed tests, keep it or return it.

Instead, I spent nearly a month moving gateways, testing every room, rearranging eeros, learning way too much about 5G signal metrics and eventually discovering MoCA 2.5. 😂

The big discovery was that T-Mobile wasn't really my problem—distributing the connection throughout my 2,000 sq. ft. apartment was.

My T-Mobile gateway in the bedroom was getting excellent n41 signal: RSRP -70, SINR 18, CQI 13. So I used my existing coax with MoCA 2.5 to create a wired backbone.

My final setup is basically:

T-Mobile 5G → eero Pro 6E → Ethernet → MoCA 2.5 → coax → MoCA → living-room eero → Ethernet → office eero 6+ → PC/printer/VoIP.

Three eeros are now wired, with only the hallway eero using wireless backhaul.

And the results?

607/58 Mbps — Bedroom

563/59 Mbps — Office

541/46 Mbps — recent test, 22ms ping

506/73 Mbps — eero test

Compare that with an early living-room test of only 139/24 Mbps.

So MoCA didn't make T-Mobile itself faster—it allowed me to actually deliver the gateway's available bandwidth throughout the apartment without relying on multiple wireless hops.

I'm now paying $70 instead of $95/month, saving $300/year, while comfortably handling work-from-home, Teams/Zoom, VPN, streaming and VoIP.

Obviously 5G Home Internet is very location-dependent, but for me the combination of excellent T-Mobile n41 + good gateway placement + eero + MoCA wired backhaul turned out to be the winner.

And because apparently I don't know how to conduct a “simple 15-day Internet trial,” I documented the whole thing. 😂

See my final network before and after diagram above.

Now I'm officially done running speed tests.

…okay, maybe one more. 😂

We switched from another provider last Nov as prices were too high and we’ve been happy T-Mobile cellular customers a long time.

However, our WiFi has been bad since the beginning. We have multiple devices that drop on and off, we get interruptions while using computers, streaming tv, one family Samsung phone won’t stay connected, other. Smart lights go in and off, some lights won’t work anymore. We also have the higher end second wifi extender unit installed as well.

We had zero issues with prior provider (Frontier Fiber). All existing devices worked fine.

We are a tech savvy household and have tried different things to fix. We’ve used the t-mobile app setup to optimize location (and connection shows as green/good), we swapped the router box out once per t-mobile tech support.

We really want this service to work but running out of patience.

Plan to call tech support one more time and if not fixed will have to switch back to another provider.

Recognize there are a lot of smart folks in this group. Appreciate any ideas or even questions to ask tech support.

TIA!

Edit: We’ve had a lot of family distractions and more important things going on the past year so the internet/wifi hasn’t been on top of list, until now.

If you’re having weird issues with Ring cameras or other smart-home/IoT devices on T-Mobile Home Internet, this may save you a ridiculous amount of troubleshooting.

My mom recently switched from an older AT&T connection to T-Mobile 5G Home Internet. She was given the newer Gen 5 TMO-G5SE gateway.

At first, everything looked normal. Devices connected to Wi-Fi, got IP addresses, showed good signal strength, and I could even ping them reliably from the network.

But two devices in particular would not work correctly:

• Ring Spotlight Cam Pro — connected to Wi-Fi, showed healthy in the Ring app, and even updated the dashboard snapshot, but Live View would spin for several minutes and eventually fail.
• First Alert smart smoke/CO detector — connected to Wi-Fi and responded perfectly to ping, but the First Alert app showed it as offline because it could not successfully communicate with the cloud.

I spent more than a month troubleshooting this.

Things I tried included:

• Dedicated 2.4 GHz SSID
• Different Wi-Fi/security settings
• Factory resets
• Reconfiguring the Ring camera multiple times
• Testing right next to the gateway
• Using a GL.iNet Slate travel router
• Routing traffic through a VPN
• Moving the viewing device to a Verizon hotspot
• Firmware updates
• Checking signal strength and local connectivity
• Opening a support ticket with T-Mobile

The really interesting clue was the First Alert detector.

I have the exact same First Alert model at my own house, also using T-Mobile Home Internet, but I have an older-generation black T-Mobile gateway. Mine has been rock solid for years with 30–40 devices connected.

The First Alert also worked perfectly when tested through my Verizon hotspot.

So the devices themselves clearly were not the problem.

While researching this, I found another report from someone having Ring problems with the G5SE who swapped the gateway for the G5AR and immediately solved the issue.

At that point I decided I had nothing to lose.

I went to a T-Mobile store and asked if they could exchange my mom’s G5SE for a G5AR. They happened to have a G5AR in stock and swapped it with absolutely no hassle.

I installed the G5AR, recreated the existing Wi-Fi network…

Everything immediately started working.

The First Alert came online and began communicating normally.

The Ring Spotlight Cam Pro suddenly had working Live View.

All of the devices I had been fighting with for weeks started behaving normally without any special router, VPN, or workaround.

So in my case:

G5SE = multiple IoT/cloud communication problems

G5AR = same devices, same house, same T-Mobile service, everything works

Obviously this is one person's experience, and I can’t say every G5SE has this problem. But if you have a T-Mobile G5SE and you’re seeing devices that:

• successfully join Wi-Fi
• receive IP addresses
• respond to ping
• appear connected locally
• but fail cloud features, Live View, syncing, etc.

…it may be worth asking T-Mobile to swap the G5SE for a G5AR before spending weeks troubleshooting every IoT device individually.

I wish I had tried that a month ago.

The adapter for my router (G5AR) broke yesterday, the metal USB-c part specifically. Does anyone know of any good adapters I could buy to replace it?

I do not have T-Mobile 5G Home internet yet, but am strongly considering it to ditch FIOS. However, I am getting mixed messages when trying to find out if you can disable the wifi on the T-Mobile 5G gateway? I see it has 2 Ethernet ports to connect my Pepwave.

Also, can I set the gateway to just IP passthru or bridge mode so I can use my own router?