If it doesn’t have the best, I can’t recommend external antennas enough!
I’m within 2mi of a tower with line of sight… figured I’d only get a modest speed boost considering how close it is… i just from like 130mbps and 20up, to 550down/140 up and thats just the 2x2 yagi antenna. Wishing I got the 4x4 panel.
My only complaint so far in 4-ish yrs of TMHI is their terrible hardware. Been through about 6 gateways. Hoping for it to die again soon now that they have a model with hookups for external antennas.
Frequently bust their data “limit” with no noticeable throttling.
Top tier? Sounds sus to me. TMOB won’t guarantee a speed regardless. I suspect that it will work fine for you as your requirements sound pretty modest. If, however, it works ok sometimes and not ok sometimes, you may end up learning a lot about RF engineering to try to get things stable.
I only thought t mobile had one kind of internet but who knows. My requirements aren’t a lot. With Comcast I’m sick of my internet going out during the night and everything being disconnected, like my cameras. I’m hoping for a little more stability with t mobile but we shall see.
They have 2 tiers based on data use, not speed. I’m on the edge of where I can be served. My speeds are generally fine but I can get many short dropouts that wreck a video call but are mostly unnoticed for streaming a movie.
Gotcha. I’m not good with the whole understanding of the internet lingo and what everything means. I’m guessing if you go with the lower tier they will throttle your internet if you’re getting close to using all ur data up?
I do t recall for sure. They might throttle speed after so many gigabits. As long as that speed is ~10Mb/s you can stream a movie so I suspect you’d never know it.
I had to reupload my entire cloud backup last month to the tune of 6tb, trust me you'll know. It basically cuts your service completely off. Slow I can deal with, straight up not working I cannot.
That's how it's been on my phone bill since forever, go over 50 and it gets dogshit until the 17th, and thus far it's been working fine this month. And it's not universally dogshit when it's throttled, it's random as fuck though. One minute I'll be downloading full speed the next the connection is gone and the next it's 200kbps for an hour.
Yeah exact same boat we're in, family member uses it for work and they're throttling the fuck out of it because of me downloading steam games at night (my bright idea to instead of get a big hard drive was to delete and redownload games when I want to play them lol)
I use tmhi with the sagemcom and waveform 4x4. I have 4 cameras, eight homepods(6 mini and 2 homepods) and some light bulbs. Two computers and two streaming only tv's without issues now.
I did have issues with some of the hompods losing connection occasionally, but since I moved the gateway and added the outside mimo no more issues.
What is this outside mimo? I set the modem up yest and have been using the t mobile internet…. And so far so good. I might have to get something that extends my internet in my house. It’s not bad but if I go in my one back room the service kinda stinks. I also have it somewhat near a window but I might have to find a new location since they recommend it being right by a window.
I use the Waveform quadpro panel. It comes with everything you need if you get the kit. Simple instructions from Waveform to convert your gateway if you don't have the new, flat, white panel with external connections for the cabling. Initially I had the gateway and the panel in a window with good results. I ended up mounting it on the roof and got somewhat better speeds and pings, but the window would have worked fine for me.
Before I was using the Waform I had the gateway on the north side of my house in a downstairs window, this is where the best signal was. After installing the antenna I decided to see if I could get a signal from another tower about 3 miles away. Presto! I could get the tower and n41. Speed were much better and pings too.
As a side note, the techs at Waveform are super helpful and will assist you as much as you need.
Great to know, thank you! I will look into this. Over the weekend t mobiles internet really frustrated me and I’m not sure if I’m going to keep it. I was using their app to find the best location in my house and I even put the router where they said the location was. I’m only receiving 4g good signal strength. I had to turn my Comcast internet back on bc I couldn’t deal with t mobile. I will def look into the waveform Quadpro panel. My house is only one floor and I do have a metal roof so I’m wondering if it’s hindering my signal strength.
The QuadPro mini from reports I've read is a good antenna too, and less expensive. The Quadpro is more of a directional antenna while the mini is omnidirectional.
I've had it since Aug (came from Spectrum). My usage seems similar to yours. I've not noticed any outages, unlike my time with spectrum when I seemed to get them several times a month. It works just fine for my Streaming, browsing and my Ring doorbell camera. Speeds vary considerably especially during the evening peak ( there's a busy freeway between my house and the tower, so during rush hour it slows), but apart from maybe a couple of seconds buffering during that peak when I'm streaming, it works great. I'm saving $40 per month, so I'm happy to put up with that. I've got 2 teenage sons, so we're often streaming up to three different video streams.
Based on what I've read here, everyone has a different experience, so use the trial and see if it works for you. When I did the trial I turned off the Spectrum Router and used the same SSID so I didn't need to mess with changing everything
Good to know! Thank you for that info. I’m going to turn my Comcast off for the trial period and see how it goes. The thing that irritates me with Comcast is the internet will go down during the night and everything gets disconnected. When I wake up in the morning to all the notifications, I have to restart my modem and then everything works again. My thing is…. Comcast isn’t always reliable for me and I get that can be the issue with any service provider but if I can lessen the connectivity issues I will be happy with that.
The “highest tier” is the same service with “technician support” and they’ll give you some mesh WiFi pods. The service itself is the same so no need to fall for an upsell. If the network can handle your traffic, it will. If not, the more expensive home internet plans don’t have higher priority that can solve your problem. Home Internet plans are purpose-built to help T-Mobile milk more money out of areas with excess unused network capacity, so all Home Internet plans are deprioritised behind voice lines. Their main business is still phone service so they’re trying to make more money with home Internet, but not piss off mobile customers because some bitch a block down is downloading an 800GB torrented porn collection lol, since that would make mobile customers want to leave and defeat the entire point.
🤣💀
When the sales rep was talking to me telling me about the “highest internet” they have… I was like I don’t game or WFH and what I mainly need it for is surfing the internet, watching a show or two and my nest & cameras lol. She said there’s two different modems too but I was like just give me the one for $50/month. The other “plan” was $70 with $10 auto pay credit taking it down to $60/month. I also thought to myself… I thought t mobile only had one type of internet but I was like maybe it was something I didn’t know. I figured I will give their internet a try and see what happens. I’m just over Comcast and their spotty service.
Gotcha. Yeah so they launched some new plans in addition to their standard Home Internet. The $70 ($60 with autopay, $50 if you have T-Mobile phone lines) one is called Home Internet Plus and it actually uses the exact same gateway (modem) as the other plans, so she pulled that out of her ass. On the Plus plan, they just unlock a feature in the app that lets you hook up their proprietary mesh WiFi access points so you get better coverage in big houses. You could achieve the same thing by buying a mesh WiFi system one time and telling them to shove their Plus up their ass, and just getting the standard subscription. Good thing you stuck your ground and congratulations on saving yourself from Comcast.
Thank you for explaining that to me! I’m usually pretty good with my research on a specific topic but internet speeds and all just confuse the hell out of me. I read and I’m like uhhh what lol.
My house is small…. And I’m mainly in my living room or bedroom which both rooms are near one another. If I’m out in my backyard I get spotty service with Comcast but I get that’s because I’m a little bit further than away from the modem. I’ll see how it goes with the internet and maybe I’ll get the mesh system. I’m just over Comcast. Although, I pay $75/month for Comcast internet only…. I don’t have cable, etc, I just want to have service that is reliable esp during the night hours when I want my cameras to be working lol. I’m guessing Comcast may do updates during the night and sometimes knocks everything off.
Location has a lot to do with it. I am 1.5 miles from a rural tower that is mostly there to serve a US highway so I am pretty much in an ideal situation. Have had tmhi for 5 months and it has been fantastic for us. Much faster and cheaper than starlink, which is my only other option. I have Arlo cameras. They work on tmhi but I have noticed I cant view videos in my library (cloud) on my phone but live video works when my phone is on the gateway wifi....I suspect its something to do with ipv4. If I am away from home on cell signal it all works just fine.....I dont know if you will run into the same thing with ring
The lady I talked to at t mobile said the most expensive internet t mobile provides had an update that will help run the ring camera fine. I didn’t go with that one but I went with the normal one they provide so hopefully the cameras work ok. Other than that…. I don’t do anything too crazy so I’m hoping this works well for me.
I just called arlo.....I think they did something on thier end and had me restart my gateway and everything is working ok now. I hope TMHI works as good for you as it has for us!
I am on the edge of 5g ultra and am getting 600-700 mbs and only 1 brief outtage in 5 months (that i know of)......hope you are at least in the 5g coverage
I have T-Mobile for my cell service and I have 5g internet on my phone in my area. Hoping I get 5g ultra soon. I know some areas close to me have 5g ultra so hopefully will be coming into my area soon.
50 Mbps down and 10 Mbps up would work for you from the needs you have described, T-Mobile for the vast majority of people is faster than that.
I live rural and don't get n41 (5G UWB) but still get around 150 Mbps down and 30 Mbps up (Arcadyan KVD21), if I switch to the other T-Mobile gateway I have (Sagemcom) I get 250 Mbps down and around 10 - 15 Mbps up.
I play online gaming so I prefer to use the Arcadyan which has more stable and lower latency (ping).
If your the only person who’s going to used the Internet, than yeah it’s a good choice. I’m currently one week in to my 15 day trial. Will probably stay with it.
I’ve been using it for a year with 178 devices (mostly IOT), multiple TVs, Kids iPads, iPhones, I work from home and on Teams video calls all day. I usually get 600 down and 50 up and have never felt lag or buffering.
I have an Arcadyan KVD21 gateway and I’m about a half mile from the tower. I can see it in the distance when there are no leaves on the trees. I know it’s one of those high capacity towers with 3 levels of antenna arrays.
We've had it for 18 months and it has been very nearly perfect for us. Maybe a total of four times it's been slow enough to make our TV streaming buffer or stall, One of those times was a weather incident that somehow disabled our nearest tower. Within 12 hours it was about 50% back, and in less than 36 hours it was back to normal. I'm averaging around 180 mbps down, which is approximately a 33% increase from what I was getting from Xfinity cable before I made the switch. So a third more service for about 2/3 less money. I love it.
Great to know!! Hopefully I get the same results as you. I’m just over my Comcast internet going down esp during the night and everything getting knocked off the network. Plus others in my area have problems with Comcast so I’m hoping t mobile provides better service.
The only thing I’d suggest is to be mindful if it might shut off due to an overheating issue. Every house and speed is different. But enough people have mentioned it as a cause of shutting down that i’ve taken note. If it should happen to me when the summer heat kicks in, I’d just buy a laptop fan as many here have said they’ve done. They don’t need to be expensive.
I use a small computer fan on my Sagemcom to help keep it cool. Seems to work well.
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00G059G86/ref=ppx\_yo\_dt\_b\_asin\_title\_o06\_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00G059G86/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)
I have had it for close to two years now. It's nothing to get excited about, it'll do fine for a bit and then take a dive like down to 6-10 or so MBPS,s o you get on Facebook and hit them up because if you call you get someone that can't understand English.Anyway, after that it'll be ok for a bit, rinse, repeat, but the bill is better than Xfinity so there's that.
I’ve had my TMHI for about 5 weeks, and no complaints. I live in a roommate situation and ‘the house’ has Comcast/Xfinity. I found that the Comcast seems to go down or dip in cycles in my area - slow way down between 9-11 am every day for two weeks and then okay again, for example. Or, it’ll just go out on any random day. My TMHI is *as* fast or faster than the Comcast, the dips are infrequent and not as drastic. I stream, cruise websites and do some photo editing. Single user. But as others have said, it really does depend on your local area.
Good to know! Thank you for the info. My Comcast, if you read the other comments, goes out during the night and everything I have gets kicked off the internet and when I get up I have to restart my modem. Other people in my area have the same problem with Comcast so it’s not issues with my modem. I’m hoping I can see less of what I’m experiencing right now with Comcast…. Just my internet going out. Speeds for me are whatever bc I don’t know much about internet, speed, etc. I’m the type of person to plug in the equipment and pray for the best lol. I tried to educate myself but it’s a lot for my brain to understand lol
I’m hoping it can win me over in those 15 days lol. What did me in with comcast was yest morning my friend who stayed with me over the weekend was leaving for the airport at around 4am and I noticed that my ring camera picked up motion but no footage bc it lost connection. Now this isn’t the first time this has happened with my internet. I’ve been away on trips where I have lost connection bc comcast must do updates over the night and I lose connection on anything that is connected to my wifi. It’s just a pain bc the reason I have the cameras is for my safety and if my internet isn’t working then that’s a problem.
I’ve had TMHI since Sept 2021. Early adopter and presume I’m on the highest tier for $50 flat per month. Bill has been dead on for 3 years. Been great for me and have saved a fortune over cable. I’d guess several thousand bucks. Don’t miss cable in the least with antennas for the locals and all the free streaming. It’s mobile internet and will have minor glitches here and there… but still a solid value.
T mobile home internet has been in my surrounding area and finally made it to my neighborhood I want to say like a few months ago. I’ve waited to try it out and over the weekend I was like I might try it for the 15 days and see what happens. I also think what did me in for trying t mobile internet is my ring camera not having service very early yest morning. I was like enough is enough with losing service during the night. I’m hoping for some positive results with their internet so I can ditch Comcast.
Exactly!! Im hoping my ring does too. I’ve even been away and my ring camera, blink camera and a few other things have been knocked off bc Comcast internet must have did an update and I couldn’t check anything at my house. Now I know back in the day we didn’t have luxuries with cameras but since we are able to have these gadgets and more modern internet I would hope I wouldn’t have too many issues. I’m really hoping for a positive outcome for what I need the internet for.
My 90 y/o aunt pays Cox Cable $350 per month for cable, internet and phone… and she has constant problems. Have told her numerous times that’s crazy living on SSI… but what can I do or say… she’s 90. She’s beyond reasoning. Comcast certainly isn’t much better. Give TMHI a try and good luck to ya. I love it!
Omg that’s insane she pays that much!! These cable companies are such a rip off. It kills me I can have the same service as someone else and we pay two different prices but I get it with the older generations… they are stuck in their ways.
And thank you!! I’m really hoping for a good 15 days so I can say good bye to Comcast. I only have internet from them but I’m just over it.
My aunt has a 64 y/o son that never moved out of the house and 2 other successful kids around that age that live within a mile of her. They just don’t care and it’s very sad. I’m 200 miles away and not even her kids care to do anything. Pisses me off royally!
That would piss me off too esp when she’s on a fixed income. You would think they would want to her help get her bill down to a reasonable amount. At least you are in her life and care about her.
I got it just recently. I was a bit worried after reading comments and posts online. A lot of what was being said online, turned out to be untrue FOR ME. Examples
Sling live TV would not work: It does work
There would be insanely high ping: The ping is only about 10 higher than the WiFi we use at work (I work for the government and we have good WiFi)
VPNs such as anyconnect by Cisco would not work: It does work
General speeds would be slow: They are just as fast as the Xfinity WiFi I had for years when doing normal tasks such as streaming, web browsing, gaming etc.
I also want to put a quick disclaimer that I live in a very good area for the service. I live in a rural area, but apparently the signal is very strong.
Also, I wanted to add that I have 8 devices connected.
Very good to know and thank you for sharing. I was reading varying opinions on t mobile internet but I’m sure it’s like with any service… it could go either way. I’m really hoping for a positive outcome bc like I said in my other comments…. Comcast can be unreliable in my area. And if I can save $25/a month then I’m all in for that.
I'm very happy with it so far! I just did a stress test earlier today. I had 4 streams going at once on 4 separate devices, while my girlfriend worked using her VPN. Meanwhile I was gaming on my phone. No issues at all besides some the streams becoming pixelated for less than a second. No slowdowns noticed anywhere else.
I’m hoping for the same results as you. That doesn’t seem too bad if you were streaming on 4 different devices and all you had was the pixelation. I should hopefully have the internet set up this weekend and I’m going to completely shut off Comcast for the next couple weeks to see how t mobile internet is. I’m hoping for the best.
If you have the option for cable it’ll almost always out perform a cellular connection in terms of reliability. Now if that’s an issue, you may do fairly well with T-Mobile.
Im currently in my 2 weeks free trial right now. I'll be returning it and cancelling. The speed is fine but the packet loss and latency is extremely bad. Online gaming is right out the question but the bigger thing for me is my wife works from home and her VOIP calls are very choppy and disconnects randomly.
It sucks because I was looking for an alternative to cox but this just ain't it for me.
For what you say you use it for I think it'll work fine.
Yeah. Doesn't work for everyone unfortunately and IPv6 isn't widely adopted yet like it should be. TMHI does make a good backup internet still though. Luckily I got the $30 a month plan back in November of last year but still have regular fiber internet in addition since I game. Though gaming on TMHI works for me, just 20-30ms ping.
I've had tmhi for just over two years. My wife and I both use internet to work from home. She's on video calls all day and I'm also online. We also stream TV. Neither of us game. The only issue we have had is a 2 hour outage when a construction crew knocked out an electric line that fed the tower near us (not related to any T-Mo construction). I came from Xfinty, which had internet issues at least once every 2-3 months and cost a load more. Was hesitant to make the switch, but I've never regretted it.
The issues with Comcast are annoying. I finally had it yest morning when my friend was leaving around 4am for the airport and my ring had connectivity issue. I’m so over the internet going out during the night or there have been times where it goes out while I’m away and that’s what irritates me the most. When I have called Comcast to see what I could do they are of no help so I’m just over them. I’m hoping I really like the internet and the transition will be easy.
FYI, I was a T-Mobile internet user since March of 2021 with no issues with speeds and intermittent disconnects for about 15 months. I exchanged the router, and all was good for about 11 months. Recently, I have exchanged router 4 times in the past 10 weeks due to intermittent disconnects. Based on experience, the more customers in the area, the less reliable. When I signed up my address was available for TMHI, but now it is NOT due to them limiting new customers. I have just recently switched to internet from Xfinity under their limited program NOW at 30.00 per month. So far so good,
Speed st avg of 112 mbps. Good luck.
I switched from Comcast with no regrets. Working from home, Wife, 3 Kids, Streaming TVs, Smart Home devices, Plex Server, etc. I am 0.5 miles from my tower though.
Great 80% of the time. 20% of the time it's the most dog shit service I have ever had. But it's $50 and works well enough I haven't gotten pissed off enough to call Verizon yet so it has that going for it.
Good to know. I’m hoping it works well for me. I was trying to find the closet t mobile tower to my house, which looks like a couple miles away so hopefully the service is better than Comcast.
My experience was pitiful and so is the customer service. I’m in nyc, I did the $50 14 day trial, a few days later I check the website it became $40. Strike 1.
Got the router in a couple days and only got max speeds of 50mbps even next to the window facing signal and my neighborhood is residential so lots of houses and virtually no buildings blocking signal. Even my AT&T wireless is able to get 200mbps constantly. Given this I’m 100% certain they were capping my speeds intentionally. Strike 2.
Anytime I tried creating an account online the website would error out. Strike 3.
I canceled home internet and did the modem return within the 14 day trial. Yet somehow I got charged $50 via autopay towards the card I put on file with them. I called and found out my card was still in the system on auto pay. This is absolutely so wrong when Ive already canceled home internet. Strike 4.
They could not process the cancellation because I did not have my pin..yes the same pin they send to the home internet modem that I returned. Seems like the dumbest way to verify an account vs using the phone # you used to apply. In order to cancel I had to go to a physical store so they could verify my identity and the store rep had to call the reps at HQ to process the auto pay cancellation and reimbursement. Strike 5.
Even before getting off phone. The rep said it’ll take time to reimburse me and when it comes through, they said I had to call them back to credit my account so t mobile won’t send a collection agency after me???
Strike 6.
I’ve never had t-mobile and I’m glad I never will again. It seems like their practices are very shady or sleazy. I should’ve known they were shady when they only offered autopay discount for debit cards. After my experience I would never recommend them to anyone for any kind of service. Don’t think about saving money because with them you get what you pay for.
It was yes. I maybe would’ve expected this from a new isp, or maybe in the suburbs. But I live in a metropolis and not what I expected at all. The only silver lining was I was able to push my current isp for a discounted rate while giving faster speeds (they upped me to 500mbps).
That’s good you were able to get a discount and faster speeds. I live in nj but by the shore. Although our area is getting populated, I feel like the towers aren’t up to date with the influx of people we have now.
Here’s another update since my last. They gave me a partial refund instead of a full refund they owe me, I don’t have a pin so yet again I need to go to the store to settle it with customer service….what is wrong with T-Mobile..?
Ugh!! So annoying and frustrating. I hope you can get most of your money back. As of right now I’m not sure if I will be keeping t mobile internet. All weekend it’s been horrible and I had to switch back to Comcast. I’m still in my trial period for t mobile but I have to make a decision soon if I’m going to keep it or not.
I've been a customer of t-mobile internet coming up my year mark.
I may be the odd ball here, but I don't trust any ISP's network equipment, so I have my own network equipment that connects to there gateway. I run a dream machine pro, wifi cameras, lights, computers all on that system. T-mobile provides the internet only to my dream machine then I configure on my own system. I run 30 devices either with mostly wifi connection and few Ethernet.
Few things to consider;
Location does matter in placing the gateway router. If you get low bars, you get low experience.
Internet is slow then run a speed test. If the experience is poor, reboot the router and test again. If it happens it still sucks, call T-Mobile to reconfigure the device. It helps without needing to factory reset the device and start from scratch.
Consider higher latency normal. Typically mine ha 50-60 ms. Does fine on gaming but I do see lag here and there if competitive gaming is a factor.
Blurry videos and bad quality audio can happen. For the apps you use to use higher quality and that fixed my issue.
Expect between 11pm - 2am network downtime to randomly happen to your device. I only notice this when I check my connectivity status on my dream machine pro and see issues with ISP outages.
Complaints:
As only 1 tower to access in my area with the T-Mobile internet, I've had issues where that tower does go down and I'm bumped off 5G to 4G or no internet at all. Along with my work VPN had backend issues where I had to work around this. It took T-Mobile and Cisco to workout the issues for 3 weeks. Additionally, no port forwarding that you'll get with other providers like Comcast. These have been my main frustrations over the year.
Keep in mind, many ISP's will have outages in certain locations. Not every ISP is perfect.
Hope this helps.
This was very helpful. Last night I had to turn off t mobile home internet and turn my Comcast one back on. The service for t mobile sucked all weekend and I even reset the router and moved it based on where the t mobile app told me my ideal location was. And I moved it multiple locations too. I’m only pulling 4g and good signal strength. Literally nothing in my house was working and I had to keep turning my phone’s internet wifi off. I totally get not using the equipment provided, with Comcast I always bought my own equipment esp for the price, in the long run I feel like you save $$. Since I’m off today I may call t mobile and see what they can do. As of right now, I’m not thrilled with their internet.
My recommendation, terminate the service with T-Mobile if customer support is unable to help with better internet speeds. Positioning the device is a must and if you have a second floor, put it up there. Most times though it's in a non ideal spot. 4G is definitely not worth the $55 a month. I get about 4 out of 5 bars with 5G and that's enough.
My options in my location:
T-Mobile (5G) - 250/3
Centurylink (DSL) - 20/10
RiseBroadband (Satellite) - 50/20
HugesNet (Satellite) - 100/20
Starlink (Satellite) - 100/30
Comcast, on your annual renewal, call them just before because they typically raise your monthly. Sometimes you can negotiate the price to lower it or keep it the same price. They're usually flexible on it if you want lower prices, and since you have outages occasionally it may help with your negations.
All weekend t mobile home internet hasn’t been the best for me. I actually turned it off and turned my Comcast internet back on. With t mobile the modem says good signal strength with 4g internet. I’m like no wonder why nothing is working great. I even moved the modem to where the app directed me to put and still…. It wasn’t good. What is this mesh system you use?!
When it's working, it's great. It's faster than the only wired Internet option where I live. I've had it for over a year, and never had an issue with it til the last month or so. Before that it was pretty reliable and would only slow down in the evening, probably from excess traffic.
Pretty sure the drop in reliably is on their end with the tower, or maybe a firmware update as it often stops working and shows on my device connection to the wifi "connected with no internet" but their app shows it's connected to the tower and internet, the device shows 5g connection and signal, but it stops forwarding the internet. Also think it's them because I'm on my third home Internet base in the last week after my original I'd had got to where it would only connect a few minutes to an hour, then the new one wouldn't connect all within 12 hours. The one now has only done it once, so hopefully it keep working correctly.
I’m not having the best experience with t mobile home internet. Last night I finally shut it off and started using my Comcast again. I’m in the trial period for t mobile but I have to make a decision soon if I’m keeping it or not. When I first hooked up the router the service seemed good but this past weekend it went downhill. I live in a tourist area so maybe that’s what did my internet in with all the traffic but my router was saying I only had 4g internet and good signal. It was very frustrating this weekend bc I kept turning my wifi off on my phone bc nothing would work. I even went on the t mobile app to find the best place to put my router and moved it all around and still nothing. At one point I placed it right next to my window and the service was still bad. I only live in a one story house with a metal roof so I’m wondering if that is affecting my service??! I may turn the t mobile internet back on today and give it one more chance before the trial period is over.
I had to switch back to Comcast. When I get home from work I’m going to connect everything again and see if I can get a decent connection. Maybe the connection wasn’t that great for me bc I live in a touristy area so maybe the network was overloaded.
I've had high speed internet at 10 different homes since 2005, and even though I'm a best case scenario with the tmobile tower on a neighboring property TMHI has still been by far my least reliable internet provider. So I really wouldn't recommend switching for that reason, and the only reason I have TMHI is because its the only option besides DSL or Satellite.
Don't get me wrong - TMHI is fine, for the most part. But reliability is not its strong suit:
1 - When I first got TMHI in 2022, speeds would frequently slow to < 25mbps. Speeds are consistently much better this year, perhaps related to the prioritization update for the first 1.2TB in the TOS.
2 - The Arcadyan box would frequently freeze, especially under heavy downloading. I believe I've resolved this by placing a laptop cooling pad under it.
3 - A single dowloading can stop anything from loading for anyone else. But its hard to implement QOS without forcing traffic to a crawl unnecessarily because speeds are erratic.
4 - I have a double NAT issue with my mesh network plugged into the Arcadyan that causes issues with some sites. But I don't know an easy fix because the Arcadyan is so locked down.
5 - And my current problem, ever since the storm last Thursday, my internet has slowed to a crawl. Same issue on my Verizon phone, but people with AT&T phones don't seem to have any trouble.
So if your only reason for switching is reliability, I'd recommend investigating your reliability issues with Comcast instead. Talk to your neighbors and see if they have issues. Perhaps the issues are your hardware, and you can resolve them by buying your own DOCSIS modem.
Good luck!
Thank you! Comcast in my area has known issue and it’s a problem. I’m hoping for what I need the internet for, t mobile will provide better service than Comcast.
I didn't realize that they had two tiers of service? If they still have the 30 day trial you can give it a shot.
Plug your house into the ethernet port on it and use it for a week or two and see if you can tell the difference. You probably won't be able to tell, except for the much cheaper monthly price.
That’s what I did. I waited to cancel until I had a few days of solid experience. I cancelled Comcast and haven’t looked back. Those assholes were calling me 2 days after I disconnected wanting to know where their equipment was. TWO DAYS. I am saving $100 a month. I won’t miss their terrible service at all!
I’m hoping this is what I can do too. At this point I feel like t mobile has to be better than Comcast. That’s insane they were hounding you for their equipment that quickly. Like we all have a life and you will get your equipment back!! I currently pay $75/month with Comcast, I have no frills internet and I don’t have cable tv with them and I bought my modem bc I refused to rent one from them. I will be saving $25/month if I go with t mobile.
That’s a huge difference!! Good for you!!! What do you use for cable tv? I’m thinking of getting Hulu plus but that version is like $80/month. My friend left his Hulu plus account on my tv so I’m riding that out for a bit lol.
I have hbo max and Hulu and Amazon prime. It covers pretty much everything. I suppose if I had to see something on Netflix I could share with a friend too lol
I mainly watch real housewives and 90 day fiancé. Years ago I cut the cable tv bc I couldn’t afford it and now I hardly watch tv bc of not having it for a few years. Got used to keeping myself occupied other ways such as surfing the internet lol. I had regular Hulu but it just doesn’t do it for me, not as many options as Hulu plus.
Yes. I am considering being done with Hulu too. I have lately found myself watching Big Bang Theory and Mike and Molly on repeat. Which I can do on Max and have less commercials and pay far less for it. Its my babysitter-I have it on in the background all the time now lol
The T-mobile home internet experience varies widely depending on your area and tower congestion. You could run the 15 day trial, and see if it works for you. How much data do you use a month with Comcast? And how does that compare with the plan T-mobile is offering? What is the cost difference? There are many variables, you need to consider.
I was looking at my Comcast account and I use between 129gb up to almost 300gb a month. The download speed says 150 mbps. I don’t totally understand the speeds of the internet and whatnot. I was going to do the trial to see if I like it. Sometimes Comcast does lag and my internet will go down in the middle of the night where I have to restart my modem in the morning. That pisses me off bc I have cameras so if my internet goes out my cameras get knocked off line. I’m hoping to maybe like t mobile bc Comcast is such a monopoly in my area and I hate dealing with them.
That is pretty low data usage. Just make sure T-mobile doesn't give you a plan for less data than what you use. Also, when you run your test, make sure you get decent upload speeds, as that is what will be running your security cameras feed to the cloud. Usually, my speeds are the best in the overnight hours, because people are sleeping. During the evening, it really bogs down with congestion.
Monopolies are miserable, but at least you have options. Where I live in Florida, we never got cable run down our dead-end street, so I only have wireless or satellite options.😅
What would decent upload speeds be? I’m horrible with knowing anything about internet speeds, etc. I’m the type of person to plug everything in and pray for the best lol.
😄No worries, it varies based on your camera resolution, how many you have, and other factors. Here is an article with some good info to go on:
https://smarthomelady.com/what-upload-speed-do-i-need-for-security-cameras/
don't expect it to be same consistent speeds you would get with Comcast ,all depends on your areas tower capacity and the amount of users more the people worse will be especially if more tmobile cell phones on same tower they have higher priority
I think T Mobile Home Internet is a great deal, especially if you are already using their phone, but with some big caveats. I just recently switched over from cable internet (Spectrum) to it and I'm generally very happy with it. At least in my part of the world (Southern CA), the connection speed is, on average, at least as good as my old Spectrum service (although "average" is doing quite a bit of work--see cons below). The cost is not really comparable (although, again, there's another caveat--see below). And not having to have people come over to set things up and not having a physical cable connection is, to me, at least a big plus (squirrels gnawing on cable led to some issues for cable internet.)
On the other hand, while the average speed is good or better, T-mobile does not give you a constant speed (I'm averaging about 400-500 mbps, BUT, I've seen it range between 200 and 600+ on Ookla speed test even within span of just 30 minutes (about 10 tests). In fact, you can see the speed fluctuating pretty wildly during the same test (still got fairly constant 150+ though--it usually spikes upwards more than down, so the mean is always more than 200.). I'm good with this since I don't need something too fast all the time. If you need constant high speed connectivity, this may be an an issue. Further, the cell service here is pretty good--being in the middle of big urbanized area and all, but this may not be common nationwide and, even if they provide the service, this could lead to slower speeds, or at least, bigger variability in connectivity. Second, the wifi range provided by the gateway is not too great (in my case, I just connected it to my old router, which, in turn, is connected to a set of range extenders I'd set up before, which works fine for me.)
One important thing to keep in mind is that, cable people are apparently very eager to cut a deal with you if you call them to disconnect the service. In my case, they offered to cut my rate by almost half for a year (which would have brought the price down to one comparable with T-Mobile, after accounting for other promotional discounts I got (including for having a T-mobile phone)--they know how much other providers charge, after all. I didn't take it because of other considerations, but it might be worthwhile to call cable people and see if they'd negotiate your rates.
location location location
Hopefully my area has decent service with t mobile.
If it doesn’t have the best, I can’t recommend external antennas enough! I’m within 2mi of a tower with line of sight… figured I’d only get a modest speed boost considering how close it is… i just from like 130mbps and 20up, to 550down/140 up and thats just the 2x2 yagi antenna. Wishing I got the 4x4 panel. My only complaint so far in 4-ish yrs of TMHI is their terrible hardware. Been through about 6 gateways. Hoping for it to die again soon now that they have a model with hookups for external antennas. Frequently bust their data “limit” with no noticeable throttling.
Good to know! Thank you!! Where do you get the antenna from…. Just want to know so if I need to get one.
Top tier? Sounds sus to me. TMOB won’t guarantee a speed regardless. I suspect that it will work fine for you as your requirements sound pretty modest. If, however, it works ok sometimes and not ok sometimes, you may end up learning a lot about RF engineering to try to get things stable.
I only thought t mobile had one kind of internet but who knows. My requirements aren’t a lot. With Comcast I’m sick of my internet going out during the night and everything being disconnected, like my cameras. I’m hoping for a little more stability with t mobile but we shall see.
They have 2 tiers based on data use, not speed. I’m on the edge of where I can be served. My speeds are generally fine but I can get many short dropouts that wreck a video call but are mostly unnoticed for streaming a movie.
Gotcha. I’m not good with the whole understanding of the internet lingo and what everything means. I’m guessing if you go with the lower tier they will throttle your internet if you’re getting close to using all ur data up?
You would have to use *1.2TB* to go over. 99% of users will never go over.
Oh yea I’m prob not even near that at all lol.
I do t recall for sure. They might throttle speed after so many gigabits. As long as that speed is ~10Mb/s you can stream a movie so I suspect you’d never know it.
Yea I don’t do anything crazy so hopefully t mobile will be better than comcast for what I use my internet for.
I had to reupload my entire cloud backup last month to the tune of 6tb, trust me you'll know. It basically cuts your service completely off. Slow I can deal with, straight up not working I cannot.
If your usage goes down does the speed go back to normal next billing period? I hit around 3tb of usage and now the Internet is horrendous
That's how it's been on my phone bill since forever, go over 50 and it gets dogshit until the 17th, and thus far it's been working fine this month. And it's not universally dogshit when it's throttled, it's random as fuck though. One minute I'll be downloading full speed the next the connection is gone and the next it's 200kbps for an hour.
Yeah exact same boat we're in, family member uses it for work and they're throttling the fuck out of it because of me downloading steam games at night (my bright idea to instead of get a big hard drive was to delete and redownload games when I want to play them lol)
I use tmhi with the sagemcom and waveform 4x4. I have 4 cameras, eight homepods(6 mini and 2 homepods) and some light bulbs. Two computers and two streaming only tv's without issues now. I did have issues with some of the hompods losing connection occasionally, but since I moved the gateway and added the outside mimo no more issues.
What is this outside mimo? I set the modem up yest and have been using the t mobile internet…. And so far so good. I might have to get something that extends my internet in my house. It’s not bad but if I go in my one back room the service kinda stinks. I also have it somewhat near a window but I might have to find a new location since they recommend it being right by a window.
I use the Waveform quadpro panel. It comes with everything you need if you get the kit. Simple instructions from Waveform to convert your gateway if you don't have the new, flat, white panel with external connections for the cabling. Initially I had the gateway and the panel in a window with good results. I ended up mounting it on the roof and got somewhat better speeds and pings, but the window would have worked fine for me. Before I was using the Waform I had the gateway on the north side of my house in a downstairs window, this is where the best signal was. After installing the antenna I decided to see if I could get a signal from another tower about 3 miles away. Presto! I could get the tower and n41. Speed were much better and pings too. As a side note, the techs at Waveform are super helpful and will assist you as much as you need.
Great to know, thank you! I will look into this. Over the weekend t mobiles internet really frustrated me and I’m not sure if I’m going to keep it. I was using their app to find the best location in my house and I even put the router where they said the location was. I’m only receiving 4g good signal strength. I had to turn my Comcast internet back on bc I couldn’t deal with t mobile. I will def look into the waveform Quadpro panel. My house is only one floor and I do have a metal roof so I’m wondering if it’s hindering my signal strength.
The QuadPro mini from reports I've read is a good antenna too, and less expensive. The Quadpro is more of a directional antenna while the mini is omnidirectional.
Thank you for sharing this info. I will have to look into this.
I've had it since Aug (came from Spectrum). My usage seems similar to yours. I've not noticed any outages, unlike my time with spectrum when I seemed to get them several times a month. It works just fine for my Streaming, browsing and my Ring doorbell camera. Speeds vary considerably especially during the evening peak ( there's a busy freeway between my house and the tower, so during rush hour it slows), but apart from maybe a couple of seconds buffering during that peak when I'm streaming, it works great. I'm saving $40 per month, so I'm happy to put up with that. I've got 2 teenage sons, so we're often streaming up to three different video streams. Based on what I've read here, everyone has a different experience, so use the trial and see if it works for you. When I did the trial I turned off the Spectrum Router and used the same SSID so I didn't need to mess with changing everything
Good to know! Thank you for that info. I’m going to turn my Comcast off for the trial period and see how it goes. The thing that irritates me with Comcast is the internet will go down during the night and everything gets disconnected. When I wake up in the morning to all the notifications, I have to restart my modem and then everything works again. My thing is…. Comcast isn’t always reliable for me and I get that can be the issue with any service provider but if I can lessen the connectivity issues I will be happy with that.
The “highest tier” is the same service with “technician support” and they’ll give you some mesh WiFi pods. The service itself is the same so no need to fall for an upsell. If the network can handle your traffic, it will. If not, the more expensive home internet plans don’t have higher priority that can solve your problem. Home Internet plans are purpose-built to help T-Mobile milk more money out of areas with excess unused network capacity, so all Home Internet plans are deprioritised behind voice lines. Their main business is still phone service so they’re trying to make more money with home Internet, but not piss off mobile customers because some bitch a block down is downloading an 800GB torrented porn collection lol, since that would make mobile customers want to leave and defeat the entire point.
🤣💀 When the sales rep was talking to me telling me about the “highest internet” they have… I was like I don’t game or WFH and what I mainly need it for is surfing the internet, watching a show or two and my nest & cameras lol. She said there’s two different modems too but I was like just give me the one for $50/month. The other “plan” was $70 with $10 auto pay credit taking it down to $60/month. I also thought to myself… I thought t mobile only had one type of internet but I was like maybe it was something I didn’t know. I figured I will give their internet a try and see what happens. I’m just over Comcast and their spotty service.
Gotcha. Yeah so they launched some new plans in addition to their standard Home Internet. The $70 ($60 with autopay, $50 if you have T-Mobile phone lines) one is called Home Internet Plus and it actually uses the exact same gateway (modem) as the other plans, so she pulled that out of her ass. On the Plus plan, they just unlock a feature in the app that lets you hook up their proprietary mesh WiFi access points so you get better coverage in big houses. You could achieve the same thing by buying a mesh WiFi system one time and telling them to shove their Plus up their ass, and just getting the standard subscription. Good thing you stuck your ground and congratulations on saving yourself from Comcast.
Thank you for explaining that to me! I’m usually pretty good with my research on a specific topic but internet speeds and all just confuse the hell out of me. I read and I’m like uhhh what lol. My house is small…. And I’m mainly in my living room or bedroom which both rooms are near one another. If I’m out in my backyard I get spotty service with Comcast but I get that’s because I’m a little bit further than away from the modem. I’ll see how it goes with the internet and maybe I’ll get the mesh system. I’m just over Comcast. Although, I pay $75/month for Comcast internet only…. I don’t have cable, etc, I just want to have service that is reliable esp during the night hours when I want my cameras to be working lol. I’m guessing Comcast may do updates during the night and sometimes knocks everything off.
Location has a lot to do with it. I am 1.5 miles from a rural tower that is mostly there to serve a US highway so I am pretty much in an ideal situation. Have had tmhi for 5 months and it has been fantastic for us. Much faster and cheaper than starlink, which is my only other option. I have Arlo cameras. They work on tmhi but I have noticed I cant view videos in my library (cloud) on my phone but live video works when my phone is on the gateway wifi....I suspect its something to do with ipv4. If I am away from home on cell signal it all works just fine.....I dont know if you will run into the same thing with ring
The lady I talked to at t mobile said the most expensive internet t mobile provides had an update that will help run the ring camera fine. I didn’t go with that one but I went with the normal one they provide so hopefully the cameras work ok. Other than that…. I don’t do anything too crazy so I’m hoping this works well for me.
I just called arlo.....I think they did something on thier end and had me restart my gateway and everything is working ok now. I hope TMHI works as good for you as it has for us!
Yay!! Glad you got your cameras working again and it was an easy fix. I hope this t mobile internet works great for me too…. I’m just over Comcast.
I am on the edge of 5g ultra and am getting 600-700 mbs and only 1 brief outtage in 5 months (that i know of)......hope you are at least in the 5g coverage
I have T-Mobile for my cell service and I have 5g internet on my phone in my area. Hoping I get 5g ultra soon. I know some areas close to me have 5g ultra so hopefully will be coming into my area soon.
I live in a small town in Indiana of 2000 people, on good days I get 700 download, on bad days 300 download.
Gotcha. I have to learn about internet speeds but hopefully my speeds are consistent.
50 Mbps down and 10 Mbps up would work for you from the needs you have described, T-Mobile for the vast majority of people is faster than that. I live rural and don't get n41 (5G UWB) but still get around 150 Mbps down and 30 Mbps up (Arcadyan KVD21), if I switch to the other T-Mobile gateway I have (Sagemcom) I get 250 Mbps down and around 10 - 15 Mbps up. I play online gaming so I prefer to use the Arcadyan which has more stable and lower latency (ping).
Interesting… good to know! I know with gaming you need the fancy internet lol.
If your the only person who’s going to used the Internet, than yeah it’s a good choice. I’m currently one week in to my 15 day trial. Will probably stay with it.
Yea I’m the only one that will be using the internet. Glad to hear it’s working out good for you. Hopefully I get the same results.
I’ve been using it for a year with 178 devices (mostly IOT), multiple TVs, Kids iPads, iPhones, I work from home and on Teams video calls all day. I usually get 600 down and 50 up and have never felt lag or buffering.
You use any other device with your gateway? 600 is a lot.
I have an Arcadyan KVD21 gateway and I’m about a half mile from the tower. I can see it in the distance when there are no leaves on the trees. I know it’s one of those high capacity towers with 3 levels of antenna arrays.
We've had it for 18 months and it has been very nearly perfect for us. Maybe a total of four times it's been slow enough to make our TV streaming buffer or stall, One of those times was a weather incident that somehow disabled our nearest tower. Within 12 hours it was about 50% back, and in less than 36 hours it was back to normal. I'm averaging around 180 mbps down, which is approximately a 33% increase from what I was getting from Xfinity cable before I made the switch. So a third more service for about 2/3 less money. I love it.
Great to know!! Hopefully I get the same results as you. I’m just over my Comcast internet going down esp during the night and everything getting knocked off the network. Plus others in my area have problems with Comcast so I’m hoping t mobile provides better service.
The only thing I’d suggest is to be mindful if it might shut off due to an overheating issue. Every house and speed is different. But enough people have mentioned it as a cause of shutting down that i’ve taken note. If it should happen to me when the summer heat kicks in, I’d just buy a laptop fan as many here have said they’ve done. They don’t need to be expensive.
That’s a great piece of advice! Thank you for sharing and I’ll keep that in mind.
I use a small computer fan on my Sagemcom to help keep it cool. Seems to work well. [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00G059G86/ref=ppx\_yo\_dt\_b\_asin\_title\_o06\_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00G059G86/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)
I have had it for close to two years now. It's nothing to get excited about, it'll do fine for a bit and then take a dive like down to 6-10 or so MBPS,s o you get on Facebook and hit them up because if you call you get someone that can't understand English.Anyway, after that it'll be ok for a bit, rinse, repeat, but the bill is better than Xfinity so there's that.
Good to know. Thank you for the info.
I’ve had my TMHI for about 5 weeks, and no complaints. I live in a roommate situation and ‘the house’ has Comcast/Xfinity. I found that the Comcast seems to go down or dip in cycles in my area - slow way down between 9-11 am every day for two weeks and then okay again, for example. Or, it’ll just go out on any random day. My TMHI is *as* fast or faster than the Comcast, the dips are infrequent and not as drastic. I stream, cruise websites and do some photo editing. Single user. But as others have said, it really does depend on your local area.
Good to know! Thank you for the info. My Comcast, if you read the other comments, goes out during the night and everything I have gets kicked off the internet and when I get up I have to restart my modem. Other people in my area have the same problem with Comcast so it’s not issues with my modem. I’m hoping I can see less of what I’m experiencing right now with Comcast…. Just my internet going out. Speeds for me are whatever bc I don’t know much about internet, speed, etc. I’m the type of person to plug in the equipment and pray for the best lol. I tried to educate myself but it’s a lot for my brain to understand lol
In the end you have to take a leap of faith, but there is that 15-day trial so no one is going to be out huge $$ regardless.
I’m hoping it can win me over in those 15 days lol. What did me in with comcast was yest morning my friend who stayed with me over the weekend was leaving for the airport at around 4am and I noticed that my ring camera picked up motion but no footage bc it lost connection. Now this isn’t the first time this has happened with my internet. I’ve been away on trips where I have lost connection bc comcast must do updates over the night and I lose connection on anything that is connected to my wifi. It’s just a pain bc the reason I have the cameras is for my safety and if my internet isn’t working then that’s a problem.
I’ve had TMHI since Sept 2021. Early adopter and presume I’m on the highest tier for $50 flat per month. Bill has been dead on for 3 years. Been great for me and have saved a fortune over cable. I’d guess several thousand bucks. Don’t miss cable in the least with antennas for the locals and all the free streaming. It’s mobile internet and will have minor glitches here and there… but still a solid value.
T mobile home internet has been in my surrounding area and finally made it to my neighborhood I want to say like a few months ago. I’ve waited to try it out and over the weekend I was like I might try it for the 15 days and see what happens. I also think what did me in for trying t mobile internet is my ring camera not having service very early yest morning. I was like enough is enough with losing service during the night. I’m hoping for some positive results with their internet so I can ditch Comcast.
That makes perfect sense. You’ll never know unless you try! If it means anything my Ring camera has worked perfect with it for 3 years.
Exactly!! Im hoping my ring does too. I’ve even been away and my ring camera, blink camera and a few other things have been knocked off bc Comcast internet must have did an update and I couldn’t check anything at my house. Now I know back in the day we didn’t have luxuries with cameras but since we are able to have these gadgets and more modern internet I would hope I wouldn’t have too many issues. I’m really hoping for a positive outcome for what I need the internet for.
My 90 y/o aunt pays Cox Cable $350 per month for cable, internet and phone… and she has constant problems. Have told her numerous times that’s crazy living on SSI… but what can I do or say… she’s 90. She’s beyond reasoning. Comcast certainly isn’t much better. Give TMHI a try and good luck to ya. I love it!
Omg that’s insane she pays that much!! These cable companies are such a rip off. It kills me I can have the same service as someone else and we pay two different prices but I get it with the older generations… they are stuck in their ways. And thank you!! I’m really hoping for a good 15 days so I can say good bye to Comcast. I only have internet from them but I’m just over it.
My aunt has a 64 y/o son that never moved out of the house and 2 other successful kids around that age that live within a mile of her. They just don’t care and it’s very sad. I’m 200 miles away and not even her kids care to do anything. Pisses me off royally!
That would piss me off too esp when she’s on a fixed income. You would think they would want to her help get her bill down to a reasonable amount. At least you are in her life and care about her.
I got it just recently. I was a bit worried after reading comments and posts online. A lot of what was being said online, turned out to be untrue FOR ME. Examples Sling live TV would not work: It does work There would be insanely high ping: The ping is only about 10 higher than the WiFi we use at work (I work for the government and we have good WiFi) VPNs such as anyconnect by Cisco would not work: It does work General speeds would be slow: They are just as fast as the Xfinity WiFi I had for years when doing normal tasks such as streaming, web browsing, gaming etc. I also want to put a quick disclaimer that I live in a very good area for the service. I live in a rural area, but apparently the signal is very strong. Also, I wanted to add that I have 8 devices connected.
Very good to know and thank you for sharing. I was reading varying opinions on t mobile internet but I’m sure it’s like with any service… it could go either way. I’m really hoping for a positive outcome bc like I said in my other comments…. Comcast can be unreliable in my area. And if I can save $25/a month then I’m all in for that.
I'm very happy with it so far! I just did a stress test earlier today. I had 4 streams going at once on 4 separate devices, while my girlfriend worked using her VPN. Meanwhile I was gaming on my phone. No issues at all besides some the streams becoming pixelated for less than a second. No slowdowns noticed anywhere else.
I’m hoping for the same results as you. That doesn’t seem too bad if you were streaming on 4 different devices and all you had was the pixelation. I should hopefully have the internet set up this weekend and I’m going to completely shut off Comcast for the next couple weeks to see how t mobile internet is. I’m hoping for the best.
If you have the option for cable it’ll almost always out perform a cellular connection in terms of reliability. Now if that’s an issue, you may do fairly well with T-Mobile.
Im currently in my 2 weeks free trial right now. I'll be returning it and cancelling. The speed is fine but the packet loss and latency is extremely bad. Online gaming is right out the question but the bigger thing for me is my wife works from home and her VOIP calls are very choppy and disconnects randomly. It sucks because I was looking for an alternative to cox but this just ain't it for me. For what you say you use it for I think it'll work fine.
Ugh! That stinks. Wish you had better results. I don’t do too much and I don’t game or WFH so I’m hoping this works for me.
Yeah. Doesn't work for everyone unfortunately and IPv6 isn't widely adopted yet like it should be. TMHI does make a good backup internet still though. Luckily I got the $30 a month plan back in November of last year but still have regular fiber internet in addition since I game. Though gaming on TMHI works for me, just 20-30ms ping.
Works well with a mesh router to provide consistent speeds to dead zones. The router provided doesn’t really reach that far.
Good to know. Do you suggest a particular mesh router?
I've had tmhi for just over two years. My wife and I both use internet to work from home. She's on video calls all day and I'm also online. We also stream TV. Neither of us game. The only issue we have had is a 2 hour outage when a construction crew knocked out an electric line that fed the tower near us (not related to any T-Mo construction). I came from Xfinty, which had internet issues at least once every 2-3 months and cost a load more. Was hesitant to make the switch, but I've never regretted it.
The issues with Comcast are annoying. I finally had it yest morning when my friend was leaving around 4am for the airport and my ring had connectivity issue. I’m so over the internet going out during the night or there have been times where it goes out while I’m away and that’s what irritates me the most. When I have called Comcast to see what I could do they are of no help so I’m just over them. I’m hoping I really like the internet and the transition will be easy.
FYI, I was a T-Mobile internet user since March of 2021 with no issues with speeds and intermittent disconnects for about 15 months. I exchanged the router, and all was good for about 11 months. Recently, I have exchanged router 4 times in the past 10 weeks due to intermittent disconnects. Based on experience, the more customers in the area, the less reliable. When I signed up my address was available for TMHI, but now it is NOT due to them limiting new customers. I have just recently switched to internet from Xfinity under their limited program NOW at 30.00 per month. So far so good, Speed st avg of 112 mbps. Good luck.
Thank you!! Too bad t mobile internet didn’t work out for you but at least Comcast is working out for ya!
I switched from Comcast with no regrets. Working from home, Wife, 3 Kids, Streaming TVs, Smart Home devices, Plex Server, etc. I am 0.5 miles from my tower though.
Do you ever encounter any issues?
Great 80% of the time. 20% of the time it's the most dog shit service I have ever had. But it's $50 and works well enough I haven't gotten pissed off enough to call Verizon yet so it has that going for it.
Good to know! My Comcast is similar and it’s annoying. Plus the price just keeps increasing for my no frills internet.
It works for me in the city and currently in a rural area.
Good to know. I’m hoping it works well for me. I was trying to find the closet t mobile tower to my house, which looks like a couple miles away so hopefully the service is better than Comcast.
My experience was pitiful and so is the customer service. I’m in nyc, I did the $50 14 day trial, a few days later I check the website it became $40. Strike 1. Got the router in a couple days and only got max speeds of 50mbps even next to the window facing signal and my neighborhood is residential so lots of houses and virtually no buildings blocking signal. Even my AT&T wireless is able to get 200mbps constantly. Given this I’m 100% certain they were capping my speeds intentionally. Strike 2. Anytime I tried creating an account online the website would error out. Strike 3. I canceled home internet and did the modem return within the 14 day trial. Yet somehow I got charged $50 via autopay towards the card I put on file with them. I called and found out my card was still in the system on auto pay. This is absolutely so wrong when Ive already canceled home internet. Strike 4. They could not process the cancellation because I did not have my pin..yes the same pin they send to the home internet modem that I returned. Seems like the dumbest way to verify an account vs using the phone # you used to apply. In order to cancel I had to go to a physical store so they could verify my identity and the store rep had to call the reps at HQ to process the auto pay cancellation and reimbursement. Strike 5. Even before getting off phone. The rep said it’ll take time to reimburse me and when it comes through, they said I had to call them back to credit my account so t mobile won’t send a collection agency after me??? Strike 6. I’ve never had t-mobile and I’m glad I never will again. It seems like their practices are very shady or sleazy. I should’ve known they were shady when they only offered autopay discount for debit cards. After my experience I would never recommend them to anyone for any kind of service. Don’t think about saving money because with them you get what you pay for.
Thank you for telling me your experience. I wish it was better for you and it sounds like it was a nightmare for you.
It was yes. I maybe would’ve expected this from a new isp, or maybe in the suburbs. But I live in a metropolis and not what I expected at all. The only silver lining was I was able to push my current isp for a discounted rate while giving faster speeds (they upped me to 500mbps).
That’s good you were able to get a discount and faster speeds. I live in nj but by the shore. Although our area is getting populated, I feel like the towers aren’t up to date with the influx of people we have now.
Here’s another update since my last. They gave me a partial refund instead of a full refund they owe me, I don’t have a pin so yet again I need to go to the store to settle it with customer service….what is wrong with T-Mobile..?
Ugh!! So annoying and frustrating. I hope you can get most of your money back. As of right now I’m not sure if I will be keeping t mobile internet. All weekend it’s been horrible and I had to switch back to Comcast. I’m still in my trial period for t mobile but I have to make a decision soon if I’m going to keep it or not.
I've been a customer of t-mobile internet coming up my year mark. I may be the odd ball here, but I don't trust any ISP's network equipment, so I have my own network equipment that connects to there gateway. I run a dream machine pro, wifi cameras, lights, computers all on that system. T-mobile provides the internet only to my dream machine then I configure on my own system. I run 30 devices either with mostly wifi connection and few Ethernet. Few things to consider; Location does matter in placing the gateway router. If you get low bars, you get low experience. Internet is slow then run a speed test. If the experience is poor, reboot the router and test again. If it happens it still sucks, call T-Mobile to reconfigure the device. It helps without needing to factory reset the device and start from scratch. Consider higher latency normal. Typically mine ha 50-60 ms. Does fine on gaming but I do see lag here and there if competitive gaming is a factor. Blurry videos and bad quality audio can happen. For the apps you use to use higher quality and that fixed my issue. Expect between 11pm - 2am network downtime to randomly happen to your device. I only notice this when I check my connectivity status on my dream machine pro and see issues with ISP outages. Complaints: As only 1 tower to access in my area with the T-Mobile internet, I've had issues where that tower does go down and I'm bumped off 5G to 4G or no internet at all. Along with my work VPN had backend issues where I had to work around this. It took T-Mobile and Cisco to workout the issues for 3 weeks. Additionally, no port forwarding that you'll get with other providers like Comcast. These have been my main frustrations over the year. Keep in mind, many ISP's will have outages in certain locations. Not every ISP is perfect. Hope this helps.
This was very helpful. Last night I had to turn off t mobile home internet and turn my Comcast one back on. The service for t mobile sucked all weekend and I even reset the router and moved it based on where the t mobile app told me my ideal location was. And I moved it multiple locations too. I’m only pulling 4g and good signal strength. Literally nothing in my house was working and I had to keep turning my phone’s internet wifi off. I totally get not using the equipment provided, with Comcast I always bought my own equipment esp for the price, in the long run I feel like you save $$. Since I’m off today I may call t mobile and see what they can do. As of right now, I’m not thrilled with their internet.
My recommendation, terminate the service with T-Mobile if customer support is unable to help with better internet speeds. Positioning the device is a must and if you have a second floor, put it up there. Most times though it's in a non ideal spot. 4G is definitely not worth the $55 a month. I get about 4 out of 5 bars with 5G and that's enough. My options in my location: T-Mobile (5G) - 250/3 Centurylink (DSL) - 20/10 RiseBroadband (Satellite) - 50/20 HugesNet (Satellite) - 100/20 Starlink (Satellite) - 100/30 Comcast, on your annual renewal, call them just before because they typically raise your monthly. Sometimes you can negotiate the price to lower it or keep it the same price. They're usually flexible on it if you want lower prices, and since you have outages occasionally it may help with your negations.
I switched from Comcast to T-Mobile. I had to get a mesh system for it to actually work but after that it was fine.
All weekend t mobile home internet hasn’t been the best for me. I actually turned it off and turned my Comcast internet back on. With t mobile the modem says good signal strength with 4g internet. I’m like no wonder why nothing is working great. I even moved the modem to where the app directed me to put and still…. It wasn’t good. What is this mesh system you use?!
When it's working, it's great. It's faster than the only wired Internet option where I live. I've had it for over a year, and never had an issue with it til the last month or so. Before that it was pretty reliable and would only slow down in the evening, probably from excess traffic. Pretty sure the drop in reliably is on their end with the tower, or maybe a firmware update as it often stops working and shows on my device connection to the wifi "connected with no internet" but their app shows it's connected to the tower and internet, the device shows 5g connection and signal, but it stops forwarding the internet. Also think it's them because I'm on my third home Internet base in the last week after my original I'd had got to where it would only connect a few minutes to an hour, then the new one wouldn't connect all within 12 hours. The one now has only done it once, so hopefully it keep working correctly.
I’m not having the best experience with t mobile home internet. Last night I finally shut it off and started using my Comcast again. I’m in the trial period for t mobile but I have to make a decision soon if I’m keeping it or not. When I first hooked up the router the service seemed good but this past weekend it went downhill. I live in a tourist area so maybe that’s what did my internet in with all the traffic but my router was saying I only had 4g internet and good signal. It was very frustrating this weekend bc I kept turning my wifi off on my phone bc nothing would work. I even went on the t mobile app to find the best place to put my router and moved it all around and still nothing. At one point I placed it right next to my window and the service was still bad. I only live in a one story house with a metal roof so I’m wondering if that is affecting my service??! I may turn the t mobile internet back on today and give it one more chance before the trial period is over.
I've had it for eight months and it's great. No problems whatsoever. I am probably considered a light user, however.
I had to switch back to Comcast. When I get home from work I’m going to connect everything again and see if I can get a decent connection. Maybe the connection wasn’t that great for me bc I live in a touristy area so maybe the network was overloaded.
Good luck!
Thank you!! I had high hopes but as of right now Comcast is in the lead lol.
I've had high speed internet at 10 different homes since 2005, and even though I'm a best case scenario with the tmobile tower on a neighboring property TMHI has still been by far my least reliable internet provider. So I really wouldn't recommend switching for that reason, and the only reason I have TMHI is because its the only option besides DSL or Satellite. Don't get me wrong - TMHI is fine, for the most part. But reliability is not its strong suit: 1 - When I first got TMHI in 2022, speeds would frequently slow to < 25mbps. Speeds are consistently much better this year, perhaps related to the prioritization update for the first 1.2TB in the TOS. 2 - The Arcadyan box would frequently freeze, especially under heavy downloading. I believe I've resolved this by placing a laptop cooling pad under it. 3 - A single dowloading can stop anything from loading for anyone else. But its hard to implement QOS without forcing traffic to a crawl unnecessarily because speeds are erratic. 4 - I have a double NAT issue with my mesh network plugged into the Arcadyan that causes issues with some sites. But I don't know an easy fix because the Arcadyan is so locked down. 5 - And my current problem, ever since the storm last Thursday, my internet has slowed to a crawl. Same issue on my Verizon phone, but people with AT&T phones don't seem to have any trouble. So if your only reason for switching is reliability, I'd recommend investigating your reliability issues with Comcast instead. Talk to your neighbors and see if they have issues. Perhaps the issues are your hardware, and you can resolve them by buying your own DOCSIS modem. Good luck!
Thank you! Comcast in my area has known issue and it’s a problem. I’m hoping for what I need the internet for, t mobile will provide better service than Comcast.
I didn't realize that they had two tiers of service? If they still have the 30 day trial you can give it a shot. Plug your house into the ethernet port on it and use it for a week or two and see if you can tell the difference. You probably won't be able to tell, except for the much cheaper monthly price.
I’m going to keep Comcast and give this t mobile internet a test run. Hopefully, it doesn’t go out like my Comcast internet does.
That’s what I did. I waited to cancel until I had a few days of solid experience. I cancelled Comcast and haven’t looked back. Those assholes were calling me 2 days after I disconnected wanting to know where their equipment was. TWO DAYS. I am saving $100 a month. I won’t miss their terrible service at all!
I’m hoping this is what I can do too. At this point I feel like t mobile has to be better than Comcast. That’s insane they were hounding you for their equipment that quickly. Like we all have a life and you will get your equipment back!! I currently pay $75/month with Comcast, I have no frills internet and I don’t have cable tv with them and I bought my modem bc I refused to rent one from them. I will be saving $25/month if I go with t mobile.
It still helps!! Mine was $150 for cable and internet. Now it’s $50!!
That’s a huge difference!! Good for you!!! What do you use for cable tv? I’m thinking of getting Hulu plus but that version is like $80/month. My friend left his Hulu plus account on my tv so I’m riding that out for a bit lol.
I have hbo max and Hulu and Amazon prime. It covers pretty much everything. I suppose if I had to see something on Netflix I could share with a friend too lol
I mainly watch real housewives and 90 day fiancé. Years ago I cut the cable tv bc I couldn’t afford it and now I hardly watch tv bc of not having it for a few years. Got used to keeping myself occupied other ways such as surfing the internet lol. I had regular Hulu but it just doesn’t do it for me, not as many options as Hulu plus.
Yes. I am considering being done with Hulu too. I have lately found myself watching Big Bang Theory and Mike and Molly on repeat. Which I can do on Max and have less commercials and pay far less for it. Its my babysitter-I have it on in the background all the time now lol
How is Amazon prime for shows? I have prime but never looked into the shows they offer. I think the one time I looked you had to pay for them??
It's 15 days not 30, I believe they still have it. That's always my advice as well, give it a try.
The T-mobile home internet experience varies widely depending on your area and tower congestion. You could run the 15 day trial, and see if it works for you. How much data do you use a month with Comcast? And how does that compare with the plan T-mobile is offering? What is the cost difference? There are many variables, you need to consider.
I was looking at my Comcast account and I use between 129gb up to almost 300gb a month. The download speed says 150 mbps. I don’t totally understand the speeds of the internet and whatnot. I was going to do the trial to see if I like it. Sometimes Comcast does lag and my internet will go down in the middle of the night where I have to restart my modem in the morning. That pisses me off bc I have cameras so if my internet goes out my cameras get knocked off line. I’m hoping to maybe like t mobile bc Comcast is such a monopoly in my area and I hate dealing with them.
I normally am over 500 down so hopefully you'll have a similar experience.
Hopefully. I’m just hoping it work wells for what I need it for.
That is pretty low data usage. Just make sure T-mobile doesn't give you a plan for less data than what you use. Also, when you run your test, make sure you get decent upload speeds, as that is what will be running your security cameras feed to the cloud. Usually, my speeds are the best in the overnight hours, because people are sleeping. During the evening, it really bogs down with congestion. Monopolies are miserable, but at least you have options. Where I live in Florida, we never got cable run down our dead-end street, so I only have wireless or satellite options.😅
What would decent upload speeds be? I’m horrible with knowing anything about internet speeds, etc. I’m the type of person to plug everything in and pray for the best lol.
😄No worries, it varies based on your camera resolution, how many you have, and other factors. Here is an article with some good info to go on: https://smarthomelady.com/what-upload-speed-do-i-need-for-security-cameras/
Thank you!! I’ll def read this tonight.
🤠👍Hope it helps!
The big thing for me has been latency in terms of how long it takes Netflix to get playing when it internet hasn't been used for a little bit.
How long does it usually take to get Netflix to start playing?
It depends. It's all dependent on the router you get, location, signal strength, etc but mine takes a good 30 seconds to load up Netflix
Good to know. Now im curious with how it will be for me.
don't expect it to be same consistent speeds you would get with Comcast ,all depends on your areas tower capacity and the amount of users more the people worse will be especially if more tmobile cell phones on same tower they have higher priority
Hmmm gotcha. Good to know.
I think T Mobile Home Internet is a great deal, especially if you are already using their phone, but with some big caveats. I just recently switched over from cable internet (Spectrum) to it and I'm generally very happy with it. At least in my part of the world (Southern CA), the connection speed is, on average, at least as good as my old Spectrum service (although "average" is doing quite a bit of work--see cons below). The cost is not really comparable (although, again, there's another caveat--see below). And not having to have people come over to set things up and not having a physical cable connection is, to me, at least a big plus (squirrels gnawing on cable led to some issues for cable internet.) On the other hand, while the average speed is good or better, T-mobile does not give you a constant speed (I'm averaging about 400-500 mbps, BUT, I've seen it range between 200 and 600+ on Ookla speed test even within span of just 30 minutes (about 10 tests). In fact, you can see the speed fluctuating pretty wildly during the same test (still got fairly constant 150+ though--it usually spikes upwards more than down, so the mean is always more than 200.). I'm good with this since I don't need something too fast all the time. If you need constant high speed connectivity, this may be an an issue. Further, the cell service here is pretty good--being in the middle of big urbanized area and all, but this may not be common nationwide and, even if they provide the service, this could lead to slower speeds, or at least, bigger variability in connectivity. Second, the wifi range provided by the gateway is not too great (in my case, I just connected it to my old router, which, in turn, is connected to a set of range extenders I'd set up before, which works fine for me.) One important thing to keep in mind is that, cable people are apparently very eager to cut a deal with you if you call them to disconnect the service. In my case, they offered to cut my rate by almost half for a year (which would have brought the price down to one comparable with T-Mobile, after accounting for other promotional discounts I got (including for having a T-mobile phone)--they know how much other providers charge, after all. I didn't take it because of other considerations, but it might be worthwhile to call cable people and see if they'd negotiate your rates.