Question T-Mobile 5G home internet

[nOOky]

I'm thinking of trying it out. We currently have Centurylink dsl which is horrible, 768kb up and maybe 7-8mb down on a good day. It's also over $70 a month. This is our supposed coverage map, we are rural in southwest Wisconsin. Not a lot of options as we are outside of town, but it looks like a tower is n the hill above us a mile away or so. We are in a dark red 5G Ultra area.

Currently I'm soliciting opinions from the masses if anyone here has experience with it...

 

[iamgenius]

Maybe starlink will work for you?

 

[Hail The Brain Slug]

I live in an area with fantastic Tmo 5G signal, my S22U routinely gets 600mbit down in my house.

I temporarily used Tmo 5g home internet when we moved in since the fiber installation was delayed by a few weeks.

It was... underwhelming. I expected a wall powered, high power device like that to have had as good of a connection as my phone, but instead it regularly reported only 3 bars of strength no matter where I put it.

Best I could get is around 200mbit down and 10-20 mbit up. Despite the reasonable bandwidth we had issues with both of us on work video calls concurrently where our calls would just crap out frequently. Sometimes just low bandwidth/poor connection issues and sometimes they would drop entirely.

I have to download a lot of data for work regularly, but after downloading for around 10 minutes nonstop my download speed would magically be reduced to only 15 mbit. It would constantly go back and forth. 10 minutes of decent download rate, 10 minutes of 15 mbit, then back.

To be fair, doing "unattended downloading" is against the TOS, but I wasn't doing what I think they mean by that. I assume due to the duration and size of the downloads I was doing, they were intermittently throttling my speeds.

Not to mention that since we already had issues with just two video calls, having a call while downloading something was virtually impossible, even if I rate limited my own download to something small like 35 mbit.

All in all it saved our behinds to be able to work with the delayed fiber Installation, but I'd never use it as a primary internet. Since then, we have used it occasionally as a backup internet, but that's about all it's good for. The promise of competent, reliable, fast 5G home internet were definitely not met in my experience.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

I live in an area with fantastic Tmo 5G signal, my S22U routinely gets 600mbit down in my house.

I temporarily used Tmo 5g home internet when we moved in since the fiber installation was delayed by a few weeks.

It was... underwhelming. I expected a wall powered, high power device like that to have had as good of a connection as my phone, but instead it regularly reported only 3 bars of strength no matter where I put it.

Best I could get is around 200mbit down and 10-20 mbit up. Despite the reasonable bandwidth we had issues with both of us on work video calls concurrently where our calls would just crap out frequently. Sometimes just low bandwidth/poor connection issues and sometimes they would drop entirely.

I have to download a lot of data for work regularly, but after downloading for around 10 minutes nonstop my download speed would magically be reduced to only 15 mbit. It would constantly go back and forth. 10 minutes of decent download rate, 10 minutes of 15 mbit, then back.

To be fair, doing "unattended downloading" is against the TOS, but I wasn't doing what I think they mean by that. I assume due to the duration and size of the downloads I was doing, they were intermittently throttling my speeds.

Not to mention that since we already had issues with just two video calls, having a call while downloading something was virtually impossible, even if I rate limited my own download to something small like 35 mbit.

All in all it saved our behinds to be able to work with the delayed fiber Installation, but I'd never use it as a primary internet. Since then, we have used it occasionally as a backup internet, but that's about all it's good for. The promise of competent, reliable, fast 5G home internet were definitely not met in my experience.

Asking for a friend if the choice was T-Mobile 5G home internet or satellite I assume you’d choose T-Mobile correct?

 

[nOOky]

Maybe starlink will work for you?

It's $120 a month here with at least a $600 install fee.

 

[iamgenius]

It's $120 a month here with at least a $600 install fee.

Install fee? I thought it is a do it yourself thing.

 

[Hail The Brain Slug]

Asking for a friend if the choice was T-Mobile 5G home internet or satellite I assume you’d choose T-Mobile correct?

If there was a reliable, reasonable bandwidth satellite option I'd go for it even with the added expense due to my needs. I have a friend in remote Alaska above the arctic circle who just got starlink and his quality of service is way beyond what I had on the Tmo home internet.

 

[mxnerd]

According to T-Mobile website, It has a 15-day test drive.
typical download speeds between 72 – 245 Mbps,

• T-Mobile Home Internet is just $50 all in with AutoPay, or $55 without AutoPay.
• There's no annual service contract and no monthly fees

https://www.t-mobile.com/buy/plan/home-internet-and-arcadyan-gateway/b1

Great deal in my opinion. Much faster than OP's DSL and also cheaper.

 

[nOOky]

Install fee? I thought it is a do it yourself thing.

Sorry, Starlink has an equipment fee, not installation, but same difference, it starts at $600.

I tried doing T-Mobile online, but my browser stuck for hours at the credit check, so I'll have to try and call when I get time after work this week.

 

[nOOky]

I installed this tonight. I've been roaming around the house and yard running internet speed tests. Setup was easy, took less than 15 minutes. The speed is variable, because T-mobile prioritizes cell phones over internet streaming devices. But I've not seen less than 120 down/20 up with a the highest ping a 40. Surprisingly out in the detached garage about 100 feet away it didn't look like any less signal. I saw around 275 down from one test in the garage. I moved the initial install from a window downstairs to our second story, didn't seem to make a difference.

My co-worker lives in a valley about 5 miles away and he has Starlink, I asked him to screenshot a couple speed tests for me for comparison.

My issue now is that it has 2 Ethernet ports, and I want to run a cable from it to an 8 port unmanaged switch as both our desktop computers don't have wireless. My issue is mainly how to run the cable physically from upstairs etc. but I'll figure something out.

Edit: I ordered a couple USB 3.0 wireless adapters from Amazon, I'll just cut the cords and go full wireless.