TMobile internet

[EarlyandLate]

Is any one actually using the TMobile 5G internet? How is it working for you? I'm tired of the ever escalating price and mediocre quality of Xfinity cable internet. I have TMobile phone service and it has been excellent for years with no price increase. (Not interested to know that your 3rd cousin's BIL had it three years ago and hated it, etc. )

 

[foxcreek9]

Is any one actually using the TMobile 5G internet? How is it working for you? I'm tired of the ever escalating price and mediocre quality of Xfinity cable internet. I have TMobile phone service and it has been excellent for years with no price increase. (Not interested to know that your 3rd cousin's BIL had it three years ago and hated it, etc. )

Ok, how about wife's aunt by marriage and she loves it?

 

[Texas Proud]

Wish I could tell you.... I put in my address and it did not offer it here... I do not know why as DD has T-Mobile for her phone and the 5G works...


I am actually looking at AT&T fiber optic as it is new here and half the price of Comcast... my Comcast is like $105 now for not that great of speed... not that I need any more as the mobile devices cannot use the speed I have now...

 

[EarlyandLate]

Ok, how about wife's aunt by marriage and she loves it?

 

[braumeister]

I'm also a long time happy T-Mobile cell phone customer but I can't get the home internet at my home either. I talked to a T-Mobile rep just last week about that and he said they are rolling it out very slowly on purpose. I imagine it's a substantial hit to their network so they need to manage it closely.

 

[Lewis Clark]

I have been using T-Mobile home internet since about November 2022. We were tired of continually rising cable rates for home internet and tried it at the recommendation of a neighbor.

I would rate the service as good most of the time. I measured the download speed frequently when we started using it and the download speed varied widely. Connectivity is pretty good most of the time. Occasionally, at peak periods of demand on their cell system, TV watching is noticeably affected. We don't stream a lot of video. There are times when web pages are very slow to load, but I cannot tell if the cause is T-Mobile or something else.

One aspect we really like is that their router is mobile. When we go to our vacation home we take the router with us, so we don't have to pay for internet service at both homes.

The service is nowhere near as good as a fiber optic connection, but the cost is much lower. So far, we are not yet tempted to dump it for something else.

 

[MissMolly]

We have it. Switched over to them in September. Works great. Once in awhile we get "blink" where the connection drops, but it only lasts about 3 seconds. I've only noticed that on the PC, never on my iPad or on the TV. I just ran a speed test. We got 165.04 down and 13.27 up. Oftentimes our download speed is 200 or greater. We also get free Netflix, free Apple TV and free Hulu. I have zero complaints. And the price is excellent and guaranteed not to change.

 

[rodi]

We switched about 10 months ago. Faster than our previous broadband (TimeWarner/Spectrum). Waaaaaaay cheaper.

Two different speedtests show same ballpark results. Download between 165-180Mbps
Upload is between 7.6 and 7.8Mbps.

With Time Warner we were getting around 40Mbps down, and 3-5 Up.

I was worried that if all my neighbors got t-mobile the speed would go down... but several have switched (based on visible wifi (locked) around me)... no degradation so far.

 

[EarlyandLate]

Thanks for the replies! Very helpful. The download speeds you gave are about what I have with Xfinity, while my upload is a bit faster.

 

[Trailwalker]

We had it for about three months. It really depends on how close you are to a Tmobile tower and how they work out de-prioritization when the tower gets busy.


We are not close to a tower, but the nearest tower also wasn't very busy--usually. We got about 100 mps on good days. The problem is that when that tower did get busy, they switched us to the next tower where speeds dropped to nothing. My wife was complaining on those days, so we went back to Spectrum. After making the call to switch, I played around with the antenna location a bit and found an optimal direction/placement that worked really well during the last remaining days. Whether it would continue, who knows. The T-mobile rep was sympathetic but there wasn't much she could do. "You live in a geographically-challenging area for our towers."

 

[QG67PK00]

I have Xfinity Cable Internet connection at home and I measure ~800Mbps download speed. I pay around $90 per month.

 

[Turbo29]

Wish I could tell you.... I put in my address and it did not offer it here... I do not know why as DD has T-Mobile for her phone and the 5G works...


I am actually looking at AT&T fiber optic as it is new here and half the price of Comcast... my Comcast is like $105 now for not that great of speed... not that I need any more as the mobile devices cannot use the speed I have now...

They only will sell it at addresses where they have excess capacity. The home internet actually had bottom level prioritization (below even MVNOs on the T-Mobile network) but in an area with enough capacity, it is rarely necessary to deprioritize anyone.

 

[DallasGuy]

I had it for about a year and finally got rid of it. I liked it because the speeds were good but the jitter was very high and so the connection didn't work very well for my phone over internet (I use Ooma). The phone calls would break up a lot and became very annoying and almost unusable at times. That varied throughout the day. If I didn't use phone calls over the internet I probably would have kept it.

fyi. jitter is "a variation in latency, or the delay of packets being received, that can be caused by network congestion, packet loss, or other delays". Basically this means the information being sent or received can sometimes be delayed or lost.

I switched back to Spectrum and then recently switched to Frontier. I can now switch back and forth between Spectrum and Frontier if one of them jacks up the price too much. I'm paying about $45 for Frontier right now.

 

[CDRE]

Been using T-Mobile internet for over a year. Was on the "Lite" plan until they upgraded area infrastructure late last year. Same price, but now the full Home Internet does not have a monthly usage cap. That infrastructure upgrade also improved the speed. Was getting about 50-100 Mbps but since early this year, its been about 150-200 Mbps. When speeds do drop to about 20-30 Mbps, a reboot or cycle the power (or both) remedies the issue. Here's a snapshot of my download speed:

 

[pb4uski]

We have cable internet at all 3 homes and in each case the price is reasonable, but only because once promotional credits expire I call and complain and they give me the lest new deal.

Florida is Comcast. 150 mbps but really 185/25 mbps per recent speedtest which is plenty fast for our needs. Cost is $66/mo but we get a $36/mo promotional discount and $10/mo discount for autopay so our net cost is $20/mo. We also pay $15/mo for modem rental, so total bill is $35 plus taxes and fees or $37.04/mo. We normally would buy our own modem but were renting our condo for Jan-Mar and wanted Comcast to be responsible for any internet problems while I was away (there were not any problems while we were away).

Vermont is Spectrum. 300 mbps as I recall was $85/mo, less $35/mo promotional credit so a net $50/mo. Currently on vacation hold for wifi thermostat and Blink security camera and cost is $30/mo.

Texas is Optimum. 300 mbps. $70/mo less $25/mo promotional credit so a net cost of $45/mo plus taxes and fees total $47.89/mo.

My high school friend has Verizon cellular home internet and it meets his modest internet needs and is reasonable as I recall.

 

[ERD50]

I had it for about a year and finally got rid of it. I liked it because the speeds were good but the jitter was very high and so the connection didn't work very well for my phone over internet (I use Ooma). The phone calls would break up a lot and became very annoying and almost unusable at times. That varied throughout the day. If I didn't use phone calls over the internet I probably would have kept it.

fyi. jitter is "a variation in latency, or the delay of packets being received, that can be caused by network congestion, packet loss, or other delays". Basically this means the information being sent or received can sometimes be delayed or lost.

I switched back to Spectrum and then recently switched to Frontier. I can now switch back and forth between Spectrum and Frontier if one of them jacks up the price too much. I'm paying about $45 for Frontier right now.

Thanks for this. I get soooo tired of all the talk about internet speeds, when most people don't use anything close to even the low speed options that are available.

As you say, things like jitter and latency are far more important in most cases, than whether you get 100 Mbps or 300 Mbps. A full 1080p stream is only something like 6 Mbps, and even 4K is ~ 25 Mbps, so a 100 Mbps can handle several streams with ease.

VOIP phone, as you say, is very sensitive to latency (delay), and jitter (variations in that delay). It has to wait for ALL the pieces of data tat make up a short segment of speech before decoding that segment. If a few pieces of data get delays, then the "train needs to leave the station" to keep the audio 'live', and that segment gets garbled.

We had a 1~2 Mbps connection for years, and VOIP was fine as long as the jitter was good. We later got 10 Mbps, and had no problem with two HD streams at once. Now, people associate 100 Mbps with dial-up! It just ain't so.

-ERD50

 

[qwerty3656]

We use T-mobile internet. At first had a lot of problems where speeds would drop dramatically during peak hours. T-Mobile then upgraded the tower near us and speeds have been steady since. Right now we are very happy with it.

 

[mebden]

I have had T-Mobile Internet from when it 1st came out as they were offering unlimited internet and no price increase for a total of $40 a month and I used to have AT&T before and they kept jacking with my rates so I dropped them and Went with T-Mobile Internet and I have less problems with it than AT&T I run 3 phones, 3 Tv's, Alexa, Doorbell, PS5, 1 laptop, and 1 iPad and when all things are connecting it works great I'd rate it at about a 9 out of 10. Also, they give you 2 choices if you want 2.4 or 5 internet speeds so you can hook up older devices to the tower. And Like others have said I take it with me when I take off in my motorhome and works everywhere ive been.

 

[tutan]

Can you use your own router with the T-Mobile modem? Thanks

 

[mebden]

I just use theirs it has no added cost for it.

 

[qwerty3656]

Can you use your own router with the T-Mobile modem? Thanks

That is one problem is you have to use their router. It doesn't allow things like port forwarding. I've read that you can bridge the Tmobile router with another router to accomplish those things

 

[Ian S]

We've had T-MOBILE internet for over 4 years after suffering with terrible cable service. We started with 4g and upgraded a year or so ago to 5g. Speeds increased by a factor of about six. Now we typically get 200 Mbps. We don't use a separate router but I think we could. The wireless coverage of our 1900 sq.ft. on a single level is fine, no repeaters needed.

 

[CDRE]

I also learned that T-Mobile internet does not open the ports that allow Magic Jack to work but since T-Mobile has a close business relationship with Ooma, the Ooma service works great.

 

[Flieger]

That is one problem is you have to use their router. It doesn't allow things like port forwarding. I've read that you can bridge the Tmobile router with another router to accomplish those things

Not sure if this is what you mean, but I exit the T-Mobile Modem/Router to a Cat6 switch which feeds 6 TV's. I've had 3 going at once (and laptop on wireless) with no problems. Service does drop once in a while and I have to "restart" the router.

Flieger

 

[qwerty3656]

Not sure if this is what you mean, but I exit the T-Mobile Modem/Router to a Cat6 switch which feeds 6 TV's. I've had 3 going at once (and laptop on wireless) with no problems. Service does drop once in a while and I have to "restart" the router.

Flieger

No (I have a switch as well for a number of hard-wired internet connections), its more for things like accessing your network from outside - you would need to send a particular port to a particular device (which TMobile modem doesn't allow).