Forum Discussion
Slow 4G connection only, but only sometimes -- SOLVED
I’ve had the T mobile home internet 5G gateway for 6 days now and it has been generally thrilling to get such high speeds after being stuck on a single-digit overpriced DSL connection for 9 years. I often get download speeds of over 100 for long stretches of time, but for me, anything over 50 is great.
So I’ve been reading a lot about this issue of how cellular connections work, since I just got a smartphone only last month. Although I’m not new to computers, and have been doing that for 50 years, starting with programming mainframes in college, but not as a profession. I was also on the internet starting in 1992.
In my rural area I am 5 miles from the only tower I connect to regularly, and have a signal strength of either 2 bars or 3 bars, depending where I place the gateway. I used a free tower mapper app to know I connect to only one tower and find out exactly where it is located so I could better orient the gateway.
However, I connect at three different band combinations, one which is great (over 100 a lot and rarely below 45 or so), one which is fine, (over 100 a lot and never below 30), and one which stinks, with connections between 4 and 20. I’ll speak of download speeds only, but the upload speeds are good on the two combinations, and bad on the single.
Examining the GUI for the gateway at 192.168.12.1 (URL address), which shows more than the app, I know that my slow connection is a Primary signal only, which means 4G only. The good speeds are both from Primary Signal and Secondary Signal, combos in my case of B2/n41 or B66/n41. That means 5G basically, the non stand-alone pairing of 4G and 5G working together, which is the current state of 5G.
For the first five days as a new user of T mobile home internet, being switched to the slow speed was not a problem. It happened only twice that I know of. I rebooted the gateway and got a faster connection right away. However, today, I got stuck on that slow, halting connection, and rebooted six times and was still on it. What did I do to solve it?
Although it is counterintuitive, because usually higher bars means better connections and faster speeds, but it turns out sometimes not. By simply placing the gateway a few feet from the window, to a place where it gets only 2 bars instead of 3, I was able to connect right away to my fastest speed and remain there for the rest of the day.
Why does it do that? When there is a weaker signal, the gateway sometimes seeks out a better signal at the tower, maybe to compensate for a 2 bar signal? So if you are in a situation where you usually get a good signal, but sometimes get that really slow connection, then you should consider trying to put your gateway in a location where it gets one less bar.
This probably won’t work with everyone, and may not work at all for those of you who know you have never connected at a good speed, and are probably stuck most off the time on the 4G single primary signal. Why? Obstructions maybe, or intense area traffic, although 5G is supposed to handle more connections better than 4G could per tower.
That said, there are instances where people get a faster signal on 4G alone instead of 5G’s non stand-alone connection. But that’s pretty rare.
Setting the gateway where there is a lower signal strength is worth a try though, if you are trying to reboot the gateway for a faster connection that you’ve had in the past, but are stuck on the 4G one time after time.
In the GUI, I use the STATUS category on the left, and then press both drop down arrows next to the Primary and Secondary Signal, and that where you will find what bands you are on.
Here is the T-mobile site’s guide to all the bands. You see how n71 is a low-frequency band? It carries tremendous distances, and some people might get a fast connection on that, but most won’t.
I’d like to know what bands people are on, just out of curiosity, if you care to share. Tell us how far you are from the tower, how many obstructions like hills or buildings (I have few obstructions) and the speeds you get on average. I hope this helps someone. That’s why I wrote it.
5G
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Frequencies that can provide 5G:
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Band n71 (600 MHz)
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Band n41 (2.5 GHz)
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Band n260 (39 GHz)
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Band n261 (28 GHz)
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With 5G, high amounts of data can be transmitted more efficiently than 4G LTE.
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One of the ways T-Mobile is rapidly deploying 5G is integrating mid-band 2.5 GHz spectrum from Sprint.
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Check out What is 5G? to learn how it works!
Extended Range 4G LTE
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Frequencies that can provide Extended Range LTE
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Band 12 (700 MHz)
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Band 71 (600 MHz)
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Our Extended Range LTE signal reaches 2X as far and penetrates walls for 4X better coverage in-buildings than ever before.
4G LTE
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Frequencies that can provide LTE:
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Band 2 (1900 MHz)
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Band 5 (850 MHz)
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Band 4 (1700/2100 MHz)
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Band 66 (Extension of band 4 on 1700/2100 MHz).
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4G LTE offers fast download speeds, up to 50% faster speeds than 3G. See Data speeds.
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Voice and data services only work at the same time when on you have VoLTE enabled on your device. Otherwise, LTE only provides data.
I have been using Tmobile home internet for about 3 years. No problems until June 30 right before the 4th of July holidays. i noticed that my internet connection went to excruciating slow to no internet connection at all! i am about had it with Tmobile home internet. I have been calling customer support to help but to no avail. They gave me a replacement “cylinder” antennae (Nokia) but its the same. It is excruciatingly slow in the daytime and very fast at night between 12 midnight to 6 am. My guess is - there are now a lot of Tmobile Home internet customers/users in my remote small neighborhood and is now congesting the internetwork during the daytime when everyone is on the internet. But i cannot afford to have no internet nowadays!, Ring Cameras (doorbell and Spot Cam), 3 FireTV sticks, Lynksis Cams in my Garage, Smart Lights, Smart speakers - all these will be useless without no internet connectivity! I will try what you suggested - moving it to another place - last try this week and see what happens. (i already tried 3 different rooms in my house) Most likely i will be forced to get back in the more expensive generic fiber company here in our small community - UIA company. :-(
Just found this post about moving the gateway a little to get less bars, and I've got to say it worked. Moved it about 20 degrees and went to 3 bars from five. Did a quick reset and B2and N41 bands showed up. Went from under 20 Mbps to 120 Mbps. Don't mind doing this onec a day. Thanks for letting us know.
I'm in S. Floridas where we (supposedly) have 5G UC. I am trying T-Mobile Internet to replace Xfinity, and so far I'm very pleased. The gateway only connects at ~45 mbps via 4G LTE, but the performance is excellent. I don't experience any latency in streaming either video or music. Download speeds are a bit slower, but still very good.
I'm connected to a b66 tower which hasn’t changed all week.
All in all, based on price and performance, I'm very happy with the service so far. My T-Mobile gateway is a KVD21, the latest one they're sending to customers.
Just switched from Verizon to T-Mobile mainly for 55+ savings but was also hoping for better data. it’s terrible! T-Mobile 5g is less than 2 Mbps! I had much faster 4g lte with Verizon. I live in rural area but still that was not an acceptable speed even 5 or 10 years ago. So much for “Faster 5g in more places.” I get 35 Mbps with our home internet provider.
One thing to be aware of with wireless signals — and this applies to both the OP’s experience and what @tjweller just posted — is that it’s important to understand how obstructions affect signal quality, AND the physics of how signals are obstructed. One of the most counterintuitive aspects is that if a signal has to pass through a solid object (a wall, window pane, etc.), the closer you get to that obstruction, the more of the signal it blocks.
The reason is simple trigonometry: When you pass through a solid object at an angle, it appears thinnest when you take an exactly perpendicular path (pass through it head-on). If you approach it at an angle, the farther from perpendicular you get, the thicker the object appears.
Consider this diagram:
Signals passing through solid objects The red arrow represents a perpendicular path, the thickness of the object is the same as triangle side ‘a’. But if we take the blue path, the length of side ‘c’ represents the apparent thickness of the object (in terms of the wireless signal). The length of ‘c’ can be computed in terms of ‘a’ and the angle at ‘x’. (See formulas. The last one just solves from Pythagoras: c² = a² + b².)
When x is 45°, c is roughly 1.4×a. When it’s 30°, c is 2×a. At 15°, c grows to nearly 4×a.
Now, a wireless signal is nothing like a straight arrow; that’s a massive oversimplification. In truth, the properties of wifi signals are almost impossibly complicated, and calculating or predicting them is a science unto itself.
But the basic premise here still holds: A solid obstruction like a wall will obscure more of the signal being received at steep angles, when you’re right next to it.
Hello, I wanted to reply here to bump this post up and say thanks to the community for helping me fix my issue. I didn’t get into the depth of signal and tower mapping that others did here, but a specific part of the OP’s comments here stood out to me, and I thought might be helpful to others struggling with their connectivity/signal strength issues as well.
TL/DR from the OP:
“Although it is counterintuitive, because usually higher bars means better connections and faster speeds, but it turns out sometimes not. By simply placing the gateway a few feet from the window, to a place where it gets only 2 bars instead of 3, I was able to connect right away to my fastest speed and remain there for the rest of the day.”
More on my specific experience, if you are interested...I have been wrestling with spotty connectivity since I got the service a couple weeks ago, and experiencing similar problems as others are (overwhelmingly) reporting here. Super intermittent speeds, frequent drop-outs, needing to reset the gateway multiple times a day. For the most part it was working well enough, and even with the disruptions slightly preferable to the 40mbps DSL I was moving away from, but...really not ideal. So I spent 2 worthless hours on the phone with T-Mobile support, and a lot of time here combing through threads, considering buying a fan, asking for a new gateway, etc.
Ultimately, the most important thing to me was the reliability of the signal to my main home PC, which acts as a media center for the house. We have lots of other devices that were working pretty well (Sonos, Fire TVs, phones/laptops, etc.) but the Windows 10 PC is down in the basement, and I could not get a dependable connection there even after buying a new PCI wifi card (TP-Link AC1200, fwiw). I was messing with the gateway settings, frequency bands, etc. and nothing really worked. I could sit at that desk with my laptop and pull 100+ mpbs while the PC was struggling to maintain single digits. Not great!
After reading this thread, I decided to revisit the very first assumption I made when setting up the gateway. It should be on an upper floor, by a window, to get the strongest signal, right? The best placement upstairs got me 3 bars, and seemed intuitively better than putting it in the basement, where I could only get 2 bars. But I found a location by a basement window (just 10 feet below my original placement), where even though I am only getting 2 bars, it DRASTICALLY improved my connectivity and signal strength to the PC and everywhere else. A little trade-off for a couple of the Fire TVs that it is now further away from, but still getting durable 40-80mbps for those, so no noticeable loss in streaming performance. I think moving it resulted in a change in the primary band I was connecting to (from 12 to 2) and this seemed to make the difference.
So that’s my story, and my recommendation. Even though you might sacrifice a bar, do not be afraid to get creative with your placement, and see if you get better results with 2 bars then with 3. This really seemed to solve the issue for me, and will likely make the difference with me keeping the service rather than going back to DSL.
Best of luck to everyone...this was pretty frustrating and while I typically appreciate T-Mobile’s customer service, they are apparently pretty terrible on the home internet front. So while we are left to our own devices I’m glad there are helpful people like you all out there! :)
Depends on combination of bands as what download speed is. B2 with n71 I average over 50 Mbps download. But a lot more buffering trying to watch tv. B66 with n71 getting 15 to 40 Mbps has much less buffering. The horrible scenario is no secondary band. I too often get B71. Two bars but only a few kbps. Usually if I get any at all on B71 it’s 100 - 150 kbps!
One more rant for the developers…
Around 8% of males in the US are colorblind. Red-green. I am one of those.
The color choices for the signal strength bars on the top of the can are terrible. Difficult to distinguish.
I hate the combo red/green LEDs I can see it change color but can’t tell you what it changed from and to
Climbing down from soap box…
Dennis
Metric is not CID, but CGI.
Just correcting the record.
Dennis
Cellmapper has multiple entries for T-Mobile when you search. I found that when I looked up the b41 tower/cell I am connecting to. Turns out it came from Sprint. I think one of the cell tower metrics is CID. Long number. First 6 digits are the carrier. It showed up as T-Mobile Sprint not T-Mobile.
We will see when the panel antenna gets here.
I hope the software jockeys that wrote this are running it at their houses. They need to eat their own dog food.
I wrote control system software for a living. I know all software has bugs, those you know about and those you don’t. The latter you really worry about.
In the software business there is a saying…
“if builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.”
Users today are debugging the software. Why do you think apps get updated so frequently? Throw that spaghetti code against the wall and see if it sticks.
Dennis
