Forum Discussion
Cant access placement assistant for my router, am I doing something wrong??
I've had T Mobile internet for almost a week now, and to say it's been underwhelming may be the understatement of the century. Quickest download speeds I've been able to reach so far are about 65-70 mbps with a 4 bar connection. I absolutely cannot achieve 5 bar connection, and I literally spent the majority of a day going to every single room in the house and trying all 4 walls.
I know that it's best to place near a window, and it needs to be a minimum of 6 feet from the ground, so I've kept that in mind and 4 bars is as good as its gonna get. I try to access the placement assistant on the internet app and I get a message after sharing my location, "oops there's a gap in our data" followed by "we can't provide signal direction in all our locations".
I take it I just will not be able to access location assistant? Would be nice if I knew exactly where to place it and which direction to face it so it's facing the nearest tower. About to give up on this "internet". Would rather pay double for Xfinity........at least it worked great.
Same problem here. Were you able to resolve it?
The bars on the gateway and those shown on the home page of the T-Mobile Home Internet app are for the primary 4G signal. The Nokia gateway has a bar chart for the secondary 5G signal on the web admin page, but I don’t think any of the other gateways do. I imagine that the 4G and 5G signals usually originate from the same location, but the direction they are pointed may be different. I get a better 5G signal than 4G, so my gateway shows 3 bars, but my 5G signal is just barely good enough to get 4 bars (I have the Nokia gateway, so I can see the bars). The 4G signal will affect the upload speed primarily (I believe).
Your best bet is to go to the “MORE” tab in the app and select “Advanced cellular metrics” and then the “5G” tab on top. That will show you the quality of the 5G signal as you move it around. It will also indicate what band you’re connected to – n41 is the fastest. There are lots of discussions about what the metrics mean within this community.
Some possible causes for you not getting higher speeds are:
• Network congestion - not enough bandwidth to serve your area plus Home Internet traffic is deprioritized
• Poor 5G connection
• connected to the n71 band instead of n41
Have you tried completely uninstalling the phone app, restarting your phone and then reinstalling it? The complaint you have isn't one I hear very often on the Forum, so it might just be a bad install of the app.
Also, are you getting a 5G connection or are you connecting with 4G LTE? I only get three bars and only 4G LTE, but the performance of my connection is very good.
To give you some perspective, I too migrated from Xfinity to T-Mobile Home Internet (TMHI). While the bandwidth was much better (800 Mbps), I knew based on my household’s usage that I was paying for way more bandwidth than I needed. We're two retirees who stream TV and have a bunch of devices. I routinely get 60-70 Mbps during the early morning and evening, but it drops to ~30 Mbps during the day. And yet there is nothing I can't do on the Internet, even with 48 (!) devices connected to my gateway.
You may well decide that TMHI isn't for you, but keep in mind that Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) is a new type of ISP that is in its infancy. Only you can make the decision of whether becoming an early adopter is right for you. Something made you switch from Xfinity to TMHI, and I bet it's price and data caps. Just keep it in mind as you evaluate TM vs Xfinity.
