# T-Mobile Home Internet



## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

I was hoping to find some discussion of this service as I am considering giving them a whirl. It is $50/month for unlimited data and uses T-Mobile’s cell towers. From just a very few actual reviews speeds vary but most seem to show minimum observed speeds well within the range needed for HD and UHD video streaming.

It is offered on an address basis meaning you have to go to their website and check your address and if it is available then you leave contact info to have them call you.

While the speeds aren’t as high as most cable internet systems, it appears that it is good enough for video streaming.

Has anyone here tried the service?


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## b4pjoe (Nov 20, 2010)

Haven't tried it as it isn't available where I live. I read an article about it and the author said the speed will depend largely on where you place it in your home. For example he got the best speed when it was by a window on the 2nd floor. I think the article was on CNET. It's been a week or two since I read it.


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

Thanks. I’ve done all sorts of searches and there are a few reviews from individuals, the vast majority are basically marketing articles just repeating the news releases from T-Mobile.

I looks like I’ll have to take a $50 flyer on it to see how it will work for me.


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

lparsons21 said:


> Has anyone here tried the service?


I've read firsthand reports in various places, including over at the TiVo forum. The speeds vary wildly, depending on location and whether you connect to a 4G or 5G tower. Sounds like the gateway is a bit flaky and when you reboot it, it loses all its settings. (Probably needs a firmware update.) I want to say I read that some live streaming services are problematic with this ISP but I'm not sure -- but look into that since you use those. (Or at least I think you still do. Can't remember what you're subscribed to this week.)

There are some threads here you may want to check out:
T-Mobile forum | DSLReports, ISP Information


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## b4pjoe (Nov 20, 2010)

This is the article I read.

I signed up for T-Mobile's $50 unlimited home internet service. Here's what happened


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

NashGuy said:


> I've read firsthand reports in various places, including over at the TiVo forum. The speeds vary wildly, depending on location and whether you connect to a 4G or 5G tower. Sounds like the gateway is a bit flaky and when you reboot it, it loses all its settings. (Probably needs a firmware update.) I want to say I read that some live streaming services are problematic with this ISP but I'm not sure -- but look into that since you use those. (Or at least I think you still do. Can't remember what you're subscribed to this week.)
> 
> There are some threads here you may want to check out:
> T-Mobile forum | DSLReports, ISP Information


Thanks. Lots of posts there and many current enough to have real value. I can't believe I didn't look at that site earlier.


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

b4pjoe said:


> This is the article I read.
> 
> I signed up for T-Mobile's $50 unlimited home internet service. Here's what happened


Thanks, that's one I had already read.


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## 1948GG (Aug 4, 2007)

I'm about 100 miles from TMobile hq in sw washington state, with some 3 towers (closest 850' away from my home) plus a rooftop array on the tallest building (6 stories) on the 6+ blocks of our small rural 'downtown'. All current 5g frequencies including bands 41 & 71 are in use, spreading out at least 50 miles in all directions.

The 4g/5g 'wastecan' nokia/alcatel 2nd gen device has been available here for 2+ months. I don't know if anyone here has seen the newer 3rd gen outdoor mountable one, there is a youtube clip on it, they finally realize putting the box outside (cable is a thin, flat poe type that can be routed through a window frame) is the way to go.

I've been with comcast for 2 decades, and moved to my current location primarily because they wired the small community about 6+ years ago; many homes here still have hughesnet and viasat dishes from the 'before comcast' time, but we have the latest docsis 3.1 system, 2Gb service but the rates on all are close to double that of the 'big cities' to the north and south.

The worst part of it is, though, the pitiful upload speeds; I've gotten an emails from both starlink and tmobile inviting me to jump, but I keep reading about problems with Voip, vpn, and other 'advanced' internet features I use every day. If xfinity hadn't dropped their pricing at the end of the covid drops 3-4 months ago (in my case better than $40/month) I'd have jumped already. Tmobile is cheaper at $50/month but has more wobbliness than starlink from what I read. But that low upstream on xfinity has me streaming 24/7 almost all month long, rediculous. The only way to get more upstream speed is with gigabit service @ >$300/month, which is simply not going to happen.

When that newest tmobile odu (outdoor unit) becomes available, and they fix some of their firmware, I'll have to really restrain myself; but then again, comcast has imho dropped their rates because of the new increased competition, and the other cablecos in my state have far better upload bandwidth (on the same docsis 3.1 systems) maybe at some point they'll realize they need to redo their allocations.


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

Currently I have Mediacom 300/20 service with a 2TB data cap. Don’t really need the speed but I watch a lot of streaming and use about 1.2TB every month. The cost is now $90/month which will rise to whatever retail is for that around this time next year. I don’t need much in the way of up speed since I don’t do much more than stream downloads of varying stuff.

With that in mind even if the speed of the T-Mobile Home Internet stays at 25Mbps or above I could use it with no problem. T-Mo’s coverage map shows me pretty solid LTE but no 5G here yet from them.

While I was diddling around with researching home internet I decided to look at T-Mo for phones too. I could save some money there, though not very much and I would lose any cell service at all when visiting my daughter over in the Ozarks. So that probably won’t happen.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

1948GG said:


> Tmobile is cheaper at $50/month but has more wobbliness than starlink from what I read.


What could be more "wobbly" than temporary outages that Starlink notes in its fine print?


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## NYDutch (Dec 28, 2013)

harsh said:


> What could be more "wobbly" than temporary outages that Starlink notes in its fine print?


More outages than Starlink's beta service maybe?


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

NYDutch said:


> More outages than Starlink's beta service maybe?


The outages are linked to no birds in sight, not to debugging.


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## zippyfrog (Jul 14, 2010)

I have tried the T-Mobile service. Tried it back in December - lots of promise, but I couldn't break free from my AT&T u-verse service, and will consider going with them full time once they have more capacity or upgrades. I am about 40 miles west of Chicago, so very good 4g/LTE coverage. At least 2 bars on my iPhone in the inner-most area of buildings, 3 or 4 bars everywhere outside. 

When I called, they told me that the service's fine print is that it is designed to be 50Mbps down, didn't specify an upload. That would be twice as much as what I get with my U-verse internet. When I do speed tests on my iPhone, consistently over 75Mpbs down and 10Mbps up, I was envisioning that since it is the same network as the cell phone, those speeds should translate to the home internet.

That didn't seem to be the case. The speeds varied greatly. Early in the morning on the best days I would get speeds over 100Mbps down - the best speed test I did was 118Mbps down. Most times it was in the 50-60Mbps range. After work - so late afternoon and evening, it struggled for 40Mbps - still faster than my AT&T. The next day though, my speed would struggle to break 20Mbps in the morning. Truly all over the place. My iPhone worked great - the home router was slower than my iPhone connected to the same towers. (at least I assume they were connected to the same towers) I could live with a "slow" download of 20Mbps as my u-verse maxes out at 24Mbps.

The biggest issue was the upload. Best days I would have 5-8Mbps upload. The highest I ever saw was 10Mbps. The killer was how often it was less than 1Mbps - the number of times the upload was .20 or.30 Mbps. Pages wouldn't load, I got a lot of "Connecting to" or "Waiting for" at the bottom of my web browser.

All that to say - when it was at it's best, it was much better than anything AT&T could give me. But when it was slow, which it was more often than not, it wasn't usable. I have had T-Mobile for almost 20 years as my cell provider and I love the service. Once the home internet is broadly available and I can see the uploads improving, I would jump back to it in a heartbeat.


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## NYDutch (Dec 28, 2013)

harsh said:


> The outages are linked to no birds in sight, not to debugging.


And what is T-Mobile's excuse? We know the Starlink constellation is far from complete, although it's growing fairly quickly with another 60 sats now moving into position and lots more to come. Minor outages are spelled out in the beta offer, so it's no secret...


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## 1948GG (Aug 4, 2007)

I'm in the 'hot zone' when it comes to either tmobile or starlink; as I commented on before, 5g on 600mhz (band 41?), 2ghz, and mid-band 2.5ghz (old sprint freqs). At least 50 miles in any direction, but I'm so close in to the towers the 2.5 is so hot it's max bars IN my house. There are several starlink subs within a couple miles of me that are on Reddit and the dropouts they get are extremely minimal, as the sats first launches latitude orbits are right overhead (46.7 latitude). I saw so many 'trains' almost every other night when they first started launches it got rediculous.

The further north or south and the fades do ramp up, it will be interesting to see the last couple of 60 sats either go more in which direction, into higher canada or lower US.

Any way, I probably get more service interruptions (at least once per week for ~1hr during their nightly maintenance window) on comcast than I'd get with starlink. If my upload bandwidth were better I wouldn't be transferring during the night, anyway.

I shall see in 6 months what shakes out.

Fyi: the cost of yanking my comcast connection up to the lower end of what the tmobile home internet seems to be providing (although I have been unable to find a user on my local tower(s) to confirm) is about double the $50 of trying out the t box. If, a big if, this 3rd gen odu device starts shipping I think I may drop the bucks to give it a try. I have a small pole out my back door to mount the thing with a unobstructed air path to my closest tower. But the test will be extensive, I average 4.5+TB/month of data with 1.5TB of actual upstream data and the rest streaming video from 4 roku's plus smart phones (that will ramp up big as soon as baseball season starts). So will be a heavy use test.


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

Well I submitted the request last week, so far no call. So I called them at the number they gave to do so and they can’t take the order. They blathered on about some usual marketing bs and said they would call me.


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## zippyfrog (Jul 14, 2010)

lparsons21 said:


> Well I submitted the request last week, so far no call. So I called them at the number they gave to do so and they can't take the order. They blathered on about some usual marketing bs and said they would call me.


Good luck with that. When I submitted the request after it said my address was eligible, I got no response. I opened up a ticket and they said they couldn't help me via chat, I had to call the number specifically for internet. I called and was put on hold, and they said they couldn't fulfill the order without a supervisors sign off. I was told that I would not need to call back, but they would call me back within 7 business days. No call back. Refilled out the form, called in and I went through the cycle again. My guess is that the reason they didn't fulfill the order the first time was they could see my upload was pathetic. But I do wish the process was easier...


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

zippyfrog said:


> Good luck with that. When I submitted the request after it said my address was eligible, I got no response. I opened up a ticket and they said they couldn't help me via chat, I had to call the number specifically for internet. I called and was put on hold, and they said they couldn't fulfill the order without a supervisors sign off. I was told that I would not need to call back, but they would call me back within 7 business days. No call back. Refilled out the form, called in and I went through the cycle again. My guess is that the reason they didn't fulfill the order the first time was they could see my upload was pathetic. But I do wish the process was easier...


Yeah, I feel your pain. When I look at the T-Mobile coverage map my address is in lighter purple indicating not the strongest LTE, but the form check shows it is available for me. So what the hell? I'll just wait and they will or won't call me. In the meantime a new fiber internet company is in town and as fiber up to about 6 blocks away from me and the subdivision I'm in. And I went to their website and indicated an interest and have told some of my neighbors to do the same.


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## 1948GG (Aug 4, 2007)

Well folks, here comes the price hikes, now $60/month. Here was a service that monetize their systems in the sense that any revenue from it was essentially money from heaven; they had to build out their system to maintain any usability vis a vis their wireless competitors, increasing the backhaul fiber bandwidth to support home internet was minimal cost at best, and their was really no way large numbers of handsets were going to get in unlimited data plans and eat huge amounts like home users.

When will they start requiring contracts, or start charging rental in their wireless gateways?


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