Questions About T-Mobile's Home Internet

[Bruce Wrenn]

A little back ground first. We live in a community of 16 houses. Internet is either DSl, or dish based. Less than half mile to the east of us is Spectrum, Century Link, or Ting. Spectrum says they will "build out" when the government pays for it. Even though government pays, service is still the same price. They could string fiber on existing poles (6) in half a day to get service to edge of neighborhood, and recover their cost in less than six months. Century Link is limited to other side of the creek, as they are a telephone based company. Ting is restricted to city limits of local town right now. Approx a mile and half in other direction, AT&T is stinging fiber to serve a new 186 million dollar pharm. plant, with no plans to come any further.. T-Mobile is offering their 5-g based home internet service for $50 a month, with forever price lock guarantee. For TV, we have Direct, which will rise by almost $70 in April when our "deal" runs out. Each time Direct switches a channel to high def, we lose it. To get either Direct, or Dish's high def, we would have to cut largest tree in our front yard, plus some trees on neighbors yard, so that's not going to work. So my questions are, does anyone have any experience with T-Mobile's internet service, and comment about the various streaming options? Good, bad or ugly let us know.

[Rich Engelhardt]

I'm also anxious to see how 5G works out for people in place of cable.

We have Spectrum for both TV and internet.
The speed test I just ran says 44MB down and 11MB up.

5G claims between 33MB and 182MB down - which would compare pretty well with what we have through Spectrum.

I only bring this up because - we also run Roku and I stream a lot of "B" movies on Tubi (who doesn't love multi-headed and extinct sharks!) without and problems at all. (other than the actual worth of multi-headed and extinct shark movies).

[Bill George]

Around here Century Link is a sham, promises but nothing but BS service. I switched to high speed cable and keep also seeing those ads for Verizon internet and wonder the same thing. Very happy with MediaCom cable for now however. We watch over Roku also, mostly DiscoveryPlus .

[Ronald Blue]

My daughter had Century Link and it was a joke. Unreliable and wasn't that great when it was working. Verizon has tried to get me on their plan for $25 a month but I am happy with the fiber internet that I have now. Around here T Mobile is terrible. Not sure about there. Is Starlink not an option or is it the same situation with having to cut trees? If you have good internet service so you can stream you can kick satellite TV to the curb.

[Curt Harms]

There might be a way to sample T Mobile for not much money. Mint mobile uses T Mobile's infrastructure. If you have a recent cell phone that is 5G capable and either T mobile or unlocked, you can buy a Mint Mobile SIM at Best Buy for $2.00. See how strong the signal is, run speed tests at different times of the day.

I had Mint Mobile and it worked fine most places but didn't always have good service in less populated areas. I switched to PureTalk which uses AT&Ts infrastructure. The places that had marginal to no service with Mint Mobile have good coverage with Pure Talk/AT&T. T Mobile's coverage map is here:

https://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/co...G4GCoverageMap

That coverage map shows we should have good coverage and most places do - but not all. That's why it would be good to check coverage 'at my front door' before making a substantial investment.

[Brian Tymchak]

TMobile offers a money back guarantee for a trial period. I've been thinking along the same lines as a way to ditch my cable company which has jacked prices 10% a year for as long as I can remember.

[Alan Rutherford]

I'd be suspicious of claims about 5G coverage in an area that doesn't already have much. Google "5G coverage" and look at some of the maps. Then discount some of what the maps say. In our area, for example, they show no 5G but we're supposed to have 4G, losing that 1/2 mile away. The reality is we have 4G on a good day if we go outside. 5G is a pipe dream.

[David Dockstader]

OK, very limited experience. I've just moved over to T-Mobile this week. I have not streamed any movies yet, but I have put my computers on the Wi-Fi. Right now fast.com shows a speed of 220 Mbps and 21 Mbps. That is well over 4 times the fastest I ever received in the last 15 years under AT&T. I am very hopeful that this is what I will stick with for a long while.

[Jim Becker]

I'd be suspicious of claims about 5G coverage in an area that doesn't already have much. Google "5G coverage" and look at some of the maps. Then discount some of what the maps say. In our area, for example, they show no 5G but we're supposed to have 4G, losing that 1/2 mile away. The reality is we have 4G on a good day if we go outside. 5G is a pipe dream.

Valid point, but TMo converted nearly their entire nationwide footprint to 5G using low-band first since it didn't require new towers, etc. The downside is the low-band 5G connections are only slightly faster than 4G, but it was a starting point. Since then, they have been upgrading further and C-Band permits much faster speeds without the need for base stations every 1500-3000 feet like the high frequency, but "really fast" variant requires. The bottom line is that the OP really needs to ascertain what the signal strength for TMo 5G is in "the neighborhood" and if possible, which (of the) variant(s) is active in the area. One other point, at least one "wired" competitor has intimated that TMo give priority to mobile devices over their fixed home Internet services and if true, that could affect performance at certain times of the day. I do not know the veracity of that statement from the competitor, however.

As an aside, I've been a TMo customer for wireless phones now for quite a few years and they have been an excellent provider including while traveling. I do not have experience with their 5G Home Internet offering, however, as I have direct fiber optic service from VZ for that.

[Pat Hemen]

5G sounds really great, but in fact it needs fiber optic cable connected to all the little towers (antennas) every quarter mile or so to get the high bandwidth we all want. T Mobile covers most of my state but we are so rural, one has to wonder how long it will take if ever, that they could connect so many antennas with so much fiber. In areas where population density can be as low as 2 per square mile or so (in my state), even with grant money it seems like a huge undertaking. You might want to contact your state Telecommunications Association to see if any of the local telecommunications coops have any plans to come in and provide coverage by adding your area to their current network. On the other hand, the Federal Government, and usually every state government has programs for companies to access funds to construct better service to underserved, and including underserved rural areas. Where I live, the overwhelming success has been the local telephone companies rebuilding their networks with fiber optic cable. The larger companies have not been able to make it work for them, but the local coops have ways to make things better, with access to low interest loans and grants, and a goal to serve everyone that wants service. Good luck, I know its so frustrating when you know there is or will be fiber pretty close to you, and you can't get access to it.

[Curt Harms]

but TMo converted nearly their entire nationwide footprint to 5G using low-band first since it didn't require new towers, etc. The downside is the low-band 5G connections are only slightly faster than 4G, but it was a starting point.

That's the claim but I went to T-Mobile's coverage map that has a toggle to show or not show 5G coverage. Even in the populous areas, you don't have to go too far away to find spotty 5G coverage. It looks like on their coverage map the population centers have 5G but maybe 10-20 miles out of town is 4G. I looked at State College PA. as an example. I imagine that's true of other carriers as well.

[Jim Becker]

5G sounds really great, but in fact it needs fiber optic cable connected to all the little towers (antennas) every quarter mile or so to get the high bandwidth we all want. T Mobile covers most of my state but we are so rural, one has to wonder how long it will take if ever, that they could connect so many antennas with so much fiber.

Please see my response above. TMo rolled their 5G out as low-band first which can use existing towers and distances. Etc.

[Bob Borzelleri]

This stuff is very black boxish.

When we built out house in 2004, we had Verizon land line service. They had bought the previous provider’s system and immediately proposed to upgrade the Campbell Soup can/cotton string system. They never did.

DSL was never an option with Verizon because the copper lines were ancient and could barely handle voice communication. We tried HughesNet; what a joke. Slow, unreliable and bandwidth caps that easily doubled or tripled the monthly cost.

Then we got a line of sight dish placed up in a 100 foot pine tree on our property. It started out slow and kinda reliable. Over the past 15 years, it has improved to as much as 25 Megabits with a 300 Gb limit before penalty costs and the base cost starts out pretty high. My sister in Sacramento has xfinity and pays something like $60 a month for 200-300 Megabits with no limits.

Three months ago, Frontier (they bought us from Verizon) strung Fiber Optic cable throughout our area. They had to agree to bring FO to rural areas as part of an enforceable agreement that came out of a series of dodgy practices. Maybe the agreement only went as far as stringing the cable because we have not heard diddly about hooking up to FO.

We have T-Mobile cellular. TM hawked their home internet to us, but even though we get 5G phone signals, we can’t get the 5G signal that is necessary for Internet. There are 8 5+ acre properties on our street. Our house is the first driveway after driving 1/4 mile up our street. We are on a high ridge and while we can’t get the 5G internet signal, our neighbor who lives another 1/8 mile down our road in a valley, is cleared for T-Mobile Internet; go figure.

Meanwhile, after nearly 20 years of communication quality that is exceeded by many 3rd world countries, we finally have FO cable hooked up to nothing. So, we continue to wait. We are very good at waiting.