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Testing T-Mobile Home Internet Service

7K views 45 replies 15 participants last post by  mschnebly 
#1 ·
T-Mobile is giving me a 30 day free test of their Home Internet Service. After that I can decide to keep it or get something else (Cox is the only other choice). It sounds promising but only using it will tell. I don't have cable TV service, only streaming so I'll be giving it a good workout. They claim 50Mbps. I don't have a lot of details but here is what they say so far. It's worth a free 30 day trial.
Home Internet Service from T-Mobile

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#3 ·
That is there plan for those who they think they can deliver those speeds to. Would help competition at least on the lower end of speeds. If it's consistent it would be fine for streaming and downloading games but would probably be hell to game with (depending on the tame).
 
#5 ·
T-Mobile is giving me a 30 day free test of their Home Internet Service. After that I can decide to keep it or get something else (Cox is the only other choice). It sounds promising but only using it will tell. I don't have cable TV service, only streaming so I'll be giving it a good workout. They claim 50Mbps. I don't have a lot of details but here is what they say so far. It's worth a free 30 day trial.
Home Internet Service from T-Mobile
Some first-hand reports from early users indicate that speeds are often well in excess of 50 Mbps. But frankly, even at 50 Mbps, that's plenty good for one 4K HDR stream while a second person in the house is doing something else (streaming in HD, streaming music, web surfing, online gaming, etc.).

T-Mobile is saying that if their merger with Sprint goes through, they will greatly increase their footprint for home broadband and also greatly increase speeds too as they take advantage of Sprint's 2.5 GHz 5G network to take speeds up well over 100 Mbps.

One question I have: does the supplied gateway have an ethernet port or must you connect all your clients via wifi?
 
#7 ·
I have this service on the free trial and i dont think i will be keeping it. Yes, the receiver does have two ethernet ports. There are two big limitations, they do not offer a static IP (admittedly not an issue for most people) and the receiver can not be put into bridge mode when you want to use your own network. I can see the tower outside my kitchen window (about a half mile away but everything is open in between the house and the tower) but i still cant get over about 25 down. What is interesting is standing right next to it I can get around 50 on my phone. I am lucky that i already have a good fixed wireless provider that gives me a solid 20/4 so i will be sticking with them
 
#8 ·
I saw this from a commenter with the service. Is this not true?

"We just hooked the T-Mo router up to our existing Linksys Velop wireless mesh network and disabled the built-in wireless. Setup took 10 minutes, tops."

If not then it might be a deal breaker for me.
 
#9 ·
I can see the tower outside my kitchen window (about a half mile away but everything is open in between the house and the tower) but i still cant get over about 25 down. What is interesting is standing right next to it I can get around 50 on my phone.
Have you contacted their technical support about this? Something sounds off. No way should any of the phones on T-Mo's network be capable of getting 2X the speeds that their own gateway can get (especially given that the gateway is larger and can therefore integrate a larger antenna than a phone).
 
#12 ·
Precious little info on the TMO website. I clicked Check Availability to see if this was even available in my area, gave it my home address and instead of it telling me yes/no it took me to a screen asking for my name/address/email/phone number so they could call me. Really? Why not just tell me if it's available or not?!?!
 
#17 ·
It's not for everyone that's for sure. We would be lucky to ever hit 20 so I'm willing to give it a try. I really want to believe this tech will be very successful for a large section of people moving into the future. This might put an end to the cable monopolies and better overall prices.
 
#20 ·
Question, I have my own Buffalo Router and Arris Surfboard Modem. Would I still be able to use my own Modem equipment? Currently have Spectrum (only game in town) and their modems are huge and not very good, plus you have to rent them.
Not the stuff you have as this is via cellular service. You may be able to purchase the device when it launches though.
 
#23 ·
Huh? Spectrum's minimum internet is 100/10 at $65. Where are you? Or what's wrong with your equipment? Are you testing via WiFi? I have that service and it tests just as advertised via Ethernet to my PC or via WiFi to my iPhone. Via WiFi to my (old) iPad 4 it tests at least 50 down and 10 up.
 
#27 ·
Question, I have my own Buffalo Router and Arris Surfboard Modem. Would I still be able to use my own Modem equipment? Currently have Spectrum (only game in town) and their modems are huge and not very good, plus you have to rent them.
You'd have to use the equipment they provide (which is included in the $50/mo price), which is a combined cellular modem+router. Although it sounds like you may have the option of also using your own router too if for whatever reason you prefer its functionality over the equipment that T-Mobile provides.
 
#28 ·
That will work as long as you dont mind double NATing. You can not turn off the NAT in the T-Mobile router so its output will be a 192.168.1.x address. I didnt check to see if you could at least change the range it assigns, maybe to a 10.1.10.x address.
Velop can just be a mesh AP without being the router, and let the ISP router be the router. Most mesh systems, with the notable exception of Google WiFi can be set up that way.
 
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#29 ·
Question, I have my own Buffalo Router and Arris Surfboard Modem. Would I still be able to use my own Modem equipment? Currently have Spectrum (only game in town) and their modems are huge and not very good, plus you have to rent them.
Just FYI on current Spectrum plans the modems are furnished, and mine doesn't seem huge. They have been the only internet provider in my area also, but a fiber-to-the-home outfit named Metronet is building in and may be available next year. They offer speeds up to 1 Gbit but info I've seen so far indicates their prices for 100 Mbps are no better than Spectrum. My Spectrum internet has been very reliable and 100 is all I need, so unless competition forces prices down the new competition doesn't do me any good.
 
#30 ·
Just saw a couple of interesting posts by some folks using TMO Home Internet.

"I can plug an ethernet port into the WAN port on my Netgear and it works just fine... only consumes one IP (as it should), leaving all of the DHCP connections to my home router, and effectively becomes almost a straight swap for a DOCSIS modem."

"Hulu (Live) on Roku/TV is incompatible with T-Mobile Internet, as it doesn't contain a GPS to identify where your location is. Current Charter connection works fine (IP is geo-tagged). T-Mobile claims that they are aware of this and might include GPS/geo-tag on future hardware. It will work fine with devices such as Android/iOS/computer which use native device GPS."
 
#33 ·
T-Mobile is giving me a 30 day free test of their Home Internet Service. After that I can decide to keep it or get something else (Cox is the only other choice). It sounds promising but only using it will tell. I don't have cable TV service, only streaming so I'll be giving it a good workout. They claim 50Mbps. I don't have a lot of details but here is what they say so far. It's worth a free 30 day trial.
Home Internet Service from T-Mobile
Did you pull the trigger on this free trial? Just saw today that T-Mobile is now saying that they will deploy their long-range (600MHz) 5G network across the nation soon. This 5G signal should reach 200 million people by the end of this year with download speeds of 60 - 70 Mbps. The existing 600 MHz radios that the company has been placing on towers since 2017 are 5G-compatible. Apparently it's just a software upgrade to have them transmit on 4G LTE and 5G too.

Today's announcement is about mobile 5G specifically but they've said in the past that their Home Internet Service would be 5G-based too. I wonder if the 4G LTE home gateways that they're already deploying also support 600MHz 5G or if that will require a new iteration of the hardware.
 
#34 ·
An update now that I have had time to play with it. First, the weird speed issue I reported earlier was not an issue with the T-Mo gateway but something going on in the laptop I was using. I get 60 - 70 down and 30 - 40 up. I have been through all the menus and I saw nothing about 5G, just LTE. It does work with putting my router after it, for my use the double NAT is not really an issue other than the principle of that is not the proper way to do it. I have been told it can cause issues with some games but as I am not a gamer that is no big deal. I was nervous about the lack of a static IP and when it grabbed a new address after about 4 hours I got real nervous but it has been stable for 2 days now
 
#42 ·
I have this service on the free trial and i dont think i will be keeping it. Yes, the receiver does have two ethernet ports. There are two big limitations, they do not offer a static IP (admittedly not an issue for most people) and the receiver can not be put into bridge mode when you want to use your own network. I can see the tower outside my kitchen window (about a half mile away but everything is open in between the house and the tower) but i still cant get over about 25 down. What is interesting is standing right next to it I can get around 50 on my phone. I am lucky that i already have a good fixed wireless provider that gives me a solid 20/4 so i will be sticking with them
thanks for the info!

I want to use my own router, for security purposes. Other than that, this would sound like a good competitor.
 
#44 ·
You still can use your own router. I have posted most of this but i will summarize here. The limitation is you can't put the T-Mo box in bridge mode so it will do NAT and give you an address of 192.168.1.1 You will need to set your router to either DHCP on the WAN side or assign a WAN address of say 192.168.1.25. If your router is using 192.168.1.x on the LAN side you will have to change that, 192.168.2.x is enough. If you are just getting internet access this will work great, the only limitation I have been told but cant confirm myself is that some game consoles dont like the double NAT. Finally, the speed issue I reported in the post you quoted was due to something in the laptop I was using, I consistently get around 70 down and 35 up
 
#46 ·
Well, I got the time to get it set up but haven't done much testing. Setup was a snap. I connected my TP-Link Archer C5400 to it without trouble. I turned off the SSID and DHCP and just use my own router for my home LAN. They made it all pretty simple.
Speed Test shows 90+ from my laptop and uploads/downloads seem snappy (once they start). Funny thing though... doing anything it seems to have a small delay and then it's quick. Almost like a DNS delay. It's only a second or two but noticeable. Cable here doesn't have that. I did these tests through the T-Mobile device before I connected my router so it's not a "chain" issue. No data caps make it acceptable for me. YTTV works great so that's a plus since I can now watch in 1080P (no data caps Yippeee). They tell me in a few months it will double it's speed with no price increase. Once I finish the nightmare of moving in I'll do more with it.
 
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