Question T-Mobile 5G internet questions

[liluzibird]

Not sure if this is the best place to ask, but I was thinking about switching to T-Mobile 5G internet since my current ISP keeps hiking prices. I'm currently getting a consistent 300 Mbps, so I don't want to downgrade this. From what I understand, the only difference between the Rely and Amplified plans are that Amplified comes with a better gateway. If this is true, is it worth it to get Rely and upgrade with a 3rd party gateway? If so, what are some good budget recommendations? Would this also be able to keep up with ~250-300 Mbps speeds? I understand that it will fluctuate because of how 5G internet works, but in general will this be fine?

I've also heard that antennas can help increase internet speeds. How much would a good budget antenna cost and how hard would this be to install?

I game a lot on my current internet, and I've heard some people complain about lagging with 5G internet. Is this a known issue, or would I be fine gaming on t-mobile 5g internet?

I tried to post this on tmobileisp reddit but my karma isn't high enough to post cause I don't use reddit so I'm posting it here.

 

[bill001g]

Almost impossible to predict way too may variables. It mostly depends on how good the signal strength is where you live. It also depends on how many other people share the same tower. It likely varies lot based on time of day and as people in cars go in out of range of the cell tower you are using.

For pretty much any application other then online gaming it likely will be ok. Gaming doesn't care about bandwidth other than when you download the game. Most online games use well under 1mbps. The requirement gaming has that pretty much no other application has is it want extremely consistent latency between packets. Like wifi in your house the data between you and the radio tower can be damaged. This will cause data retransmission which takes a small amount of time. You will see lag and stutter beecause of this. It will likely be completley random because it is other peoples traffic. It is not as bad as wifi because a mobile broadband the tower is in full control of who is transmitting and when but it is still a radio signal. Could be anything a reflected signal off a truck driving by.

If you are using a tmobile phone plan maybe try to run in hotspot mode and see how good or bad it works. I would not recommend any kind of wiresless in the path when you play games.

The 300mbps means very little. Most ISP lie. They know very well that the average use is very low. Watching 4k netlix is only 30mbps and most other things are far less. So they can pretend that everyone can use 300mbps at the same time but not if everyone was download copies of microsoft flight simulator constantly. This is not just mobile broadband even fiber plays games with the number. You share the actual physical fiber strand with many neighbors and the best systems only have 10gbit total for a around 128 neighbors.

Mobile broad band has much less total bandwidth to start with (it depends on what radio frequiency they license for that tower) and they have many many more users.

 

[punkncat]

To be fair, I am not sure I am discussing the same product.

One of my friends picked up a T Mobile cube looking thing that provided a hot spot anywhere there was signal and was a pretty good cost per month. It came in super handy for a race weekend where several people are in an area of a camper parking together and share this hotspot for access. I am not sure of the speed variables but to say that the download was good enough for several people to be watching phone feeds of different video, calling, such as that. The upload speed was laughable.

This same individual got Starlink for the last event and commented that even though Starlink was faster, the added latency made the T Mobile cube thing a far better choice while on a mobile device. The inverse on a laptop, according to his use case at that event.

 

[liluzibird]

To be fair, I am not sure I am discussing the same product.

One of my friends picked up a T Mobile cube looking thing that provided a hot spot anywhere there was signal and was a pretty good cost per month. It came in super handy for a race weekend where several people are in an area of a camper parking together and share this hotspot for access. I am not sure of the speed variables but to say that the download was good enough for several people to be watching phone feeds of different video, calling, such as that. The upload speed was laughable.

This same individual got Starlink for the last event and commented that even though Starlink was faster, the added latency made the T Mobile cube thing a far better choice while on a mobile device. The inverse on a laptop, according to his use case at that event.

I think that's a different product. What I'm talking about is basically just 5G signal being converted to WiFi and used for home internet. From what I've seen, Starlink has a speed of 80-250 Mbps which might be too slow for me. I've seen people commenting on their T-Mobile 5G internet getting to speeds of 500 Mbps so I'm wondering if people here have any experience with it. Thank you for the reply though.

 

[evermorex76]

Providers may also deprioritize home Internet traffic before they do mobile phone traffic during times of high usage/congestion. They do install additional equipment/frequencies in areas where they are providing home Internet services, rather than just adding those users to the towers and existing bandwidth that were already in use for mobile phones, but like every ISP they do oversubscribe, and it's a lot harder to go beyond a certain total.

It's completely impossible to predict your speed because it depends on where the tower is located that you'd connect to, and where you can place the equipment, and what the terrain, trees and buildings between you and the tower are like. My sister has AT&T 5G home Internet and gets about 100Mbps (and my nephew does game on it happily, but he's not a "competitive gamer" so a little latency in things like a first person shooter or MOBA don't bother him), but 5G latency isn't completely awful. But she had to put the gateway in one specific corner of the house to get that connection, because phone service with every provider sucks inside her house.

Most of those gateways provide antenna connections, so you could set those up in a good position, like in an attic or even outside the house to get better signal, and run the cables to the gateway. I don't really think a "better" third-party gateway will make any difference in speeds, but there may be additional features you like. (Or simply known issues with the ones provided by T-Mobile that you want to avoid.) Keep in mind you'll be under carrier-grade NAT with 5G Internet, just like a mobile phone, so you won't have your own public IP address and can't do things like port forwarding.

300Mbps would be at the very high end of what T-Mobile or any provider will let a user get most of the time, because that's a LOT of bandwidth taken up and cuts into the margins on the service and affects other users. They could throw tons of backhaul bandwidth in going to the tower, but there's just a hard limit on how much they can spread around a given area via the wireless part, and adding a new frequency band or adding a tower to reduce the area of coverage is a high cost. There might be periods where you get higher, as T-Mobile says "typical" speed is 133-415, especially if you're lucky enough to be in an area that is not heavily oversubscribed and doesn't have a lot of mobile users, but that could change over time as more people use 5G; T-Mobile won't do anything to increase available bandwidth until the service has reached a point that it's unacceptably slow for users. But you simply can't tell without testing, and even testing with your phone may not represent what a 5G gateway would get.

A "hotspot" service from a wireless provider is intended to be mobile. You can take the little device anywhere and it's basically just a cell phone without a screen, with very limited "router" features. That is often used by people who need Internet service where they couldn't get anything wired or don't need it permanently, like a construction company office on-site at a job or as your friend used it. They price that service high for the convenience of mobility, usually with low data caps and reductions to 4G speeds during high congestion. 5G Internet is similar but is intended to be in a fixed location, and is priced to get people who want service in one place, at home (not a business). Taking it somewhere else violates the terms and could be detected if you take it too far away because it will be trying to connect to towers you couldn't normally reach. They don't seem to actually enforce that limit in most cases, but those devices aren't as portable as a "hotspot" device.

The 5G Home Internet service has limits that most wired services don't, like all wireless services. You'll be deprioritized during congestion, and get even slower if you go over 1.2TB per month. They also control your streaming video resolution like mobile phone service does (depending on "available speeds", whatever that means).

T-Mobile does give you 15 days to test the service, so you won't just be stuck with it. Just keep your current service active until you decide. Personally I'd still pay a good bit more for wired service like fiber or cable. I'd check how that works if you don't have any other T-Mobile service, since the terms say it comes by "bill credit" up to two billing cycles after you submit the request. Last time I had a credit with a cable provider after cancelling, they sent me a pre-paid card.

 

[liluzibird]

Almost impossible to predict way too may variables. It mostly depends on how good the signal strength is where you live. It also depends on how many other people share the same tower. It likely varies lot based on time of day and as people in cars go in out of range of the cell tower you are using.

For pretty much any application other then online gaming it likely will be ok. Gaming doesn't care about bandwidth other than when you download the game. Most online games use well under 1mbps. The requirement gaming has that pretty much no other application has is it want extremely consistent latency between packets. Like wifi in your house the data between you and the radio tower can be damaged. This will cause data retransmission which takes a small amount of time. You will see lag and stutter beecause of this. It will likely be completley random because it is other peoples traffic. It is not as bad as wifi because a mobile broadband the tower is in full control of who is transmitting and when but it is still a radio signal. Could be anything a reflected signal off a truck driving by.

If you are using a tmobile phone plan maybe try to run in hotspot mode and see how good or bad it works. I would not recommend any kind of wiresless in the path when you play games.

The 300mbps means very little. Most ISP lie. They know very well that the average use is very low. Watching 4k netlix is only 30mbps and most other things are far less. So they can pretend that everyone can use 300mbps at the same time but not if everyone was download copies of microsoft flight simulator constantly. This is not just mobile broadband even fiber plays games with the number. You share the actual physical fiber strand with many neighbors and the best systems only have 10gbit total for a around 128 neighbors.

Mobile broad band has much less total bandwidth to start with (it depends on what radio frequiency they license for that tower) and they have many many more users.

So you wouldn't suggest using 5G internet for gaming? I've seen people recommend routers which have SQM capabilities to fix some of the issues you mentioned when gaming. Do you think this would solve the problems or do you think its not worth getting 5G internet altogether?

 

[liluzibird]

Providers may also deprioritize home Internet traffic before they do mobile phone traffic during times of high usage/congestion. They do install additional equipment/frequencies in areas where they are providing home Internet services, rather than just adding those users to the towers and existing bandwidth that were already in use for mobile phones, but like every ISP they do oversubscribe, and it's a lot harder to go beyond a certain total.

It's completely impossible to predict your speed because it depends on where the tower is located that you'd connect to, and where you can place the equipment, and what the terrain, trees and buildings between you and the tower are like. My sister has AT&T 5G home Internet and gets about 100Mbps (and my nephew does game on it happily, but he's not a "competitive gamer" so a little latency in things like a first person shooter or MOBA don't bother him), but 5G latency isn't completely awful. But she had to put the gateway in one specific corner of the house to get that connection, because phone service with every provider sucks inside her house.

Most of those gateways provide antenna connections, so you could set those up in a good position, like in an attic or even outside the house to get better signal, and run the cables to the gateway. I don't really think a "better" third-party gateway will make any difference in speeds, but there may be additional features you like. (Or simply known issues with the ones provided by T-Mobile that you want to avoid.) Keep in mind you'll be under carrier-grade NAT with 5G Internet, just like a mobile phone, so you won't have your own public IP address and can't do things like port forwarding.

300Mbps would be at the very high end of what T-Mobile or any provider will let a user get most of the time, because that's a LOT of bandwidth taken up and cuts into the margins on the service and affects other users. They could throw tons of backhaul bandwidth in going to the tower, but there's just a hard limit on how much they can spread around a given area via the wireless part, and adding a new frequency band or adding a tower to reduce the area of coverage is a high cost. There might be periods where you get higher, as T-Mobile says "typical" speed is 133-415, especially if you're lucky enough to be in an area that is not heavily oversubscribed and doesn't have a lot of mobile users, but that could change over time as more people use 5G; T-Mobile won't do anything to increase available bandwidth until the service has reached a point that it's unacceptably slow for users. But you simply can't tell without testing, and even testing with your phone may not represent what a 5G gateway would get.

A "hotspot" service from a wireless provider is intended to be mobile. You can take the little device anywhere and it's basically just a cell phone without a screen, with very limited "router" features. That is often used by people who need Internet service where they couldn't get anything wired or don't need it permanently, like a construction company office on-site at a job or as your friend used it. They price that service high for the convenience of mobility, usually with low data caps and reductions to 4G speeds during high congestion. 5G Internet is similar but is intended to be in a fixed location, and is priced to get people who want service in one place, at home (not a business). Taking it somewhere else violates the terms and could be detected if you take it too far away because it will be trying to connect to towers you couldn't normally reach. They don't seem to actually enforce that limit in most cases, but those devices aren't as portable as a "hotspot" device.

The 5G Home Internet service has limits that most wired services don't, like all wireless services. You'll be deprioritized during congestion, and get even slower if you go over 1.2TB per month. They also control your streaming video resolution like mobile phone service does (depending on "available speeds", whatever that means).

T-Mobile does give you 15 days to test the service, so you won't just be stuck with it. Just keep your current service active until you decide. Personally I'd still pay a good bit more for wired service like fiber or cable. I'd check how that works if you don't have any other T-Mobile service, since the terms say it comes by "bill credit" up to two billing cycles after you submit the request. Last time I had a credit with a cable provider after cancelling, they sent me a pre-paid card.

Okay I think you convinced me to stay with my current ISP then. It's a shame that ISPs basically have a monopoly over regions cause the one I have to use just steadily increases prices over time and I end up paying so many unnecessary fees, but I also don't want to sacrifice my internet speed for cheaper internet. Thank you for the advice.

 

[evermorex76]

You could call them up and tell them you're thinking of cancelling and switching providers because of the high price, but you do really like their service, and their retention department may give you a "deal", like the new customer price for 12 months or increasing your speed for the same price. There may also be smaller providers in your area that you aren't aware of, that may have better pricing. Search for "Internet services in <city/state/zip>" and there are sites that list the providers, and then you have to check each one to see whether they cover your exact address. Just depends on the market, and there definitely are a lot where there is absolutely no competition, or where there may be alternate providers but they don't cover the entire city (only going for the high-density residential areas or business zones).

 

[bill001g]

I was going to post a similar response to what evermorex76 did but I was too lazy at the time to look up if they had the hidden restrictions that they de prioritize home internet in favor of the higher paying mobile customers. There are so many plans now days and I wasn't sure if the one you looked at had that "feature"

Any kind of QoS is silly now days. You only need to prioritize one kind of data over another when there is congestion...ie you are over using the internet connection you pay for. Not very likely now days. Key here it only proritized between users INSIDE your house. You can do nothing about other peoples traffic. If you could mine would always be most important.

In a way that is what the ISP is doing letting customers who spend more get better performance.

 

[bill001g]

ISP are really stupid.
For a project I have comcast and att fiber. Att fiber has always been cheaper for much more bandwidth. Comcast raised the prices again and I soon saw the att trucks in front of neighbors houses. Since I need a backup internet and ATT has been so stable I might use a mobile provider that costs less maybe even on with a data cap. I can live without games if I ever run on my backup.

 

[evermorex76]

A lot of people may not realize fiber is available at all, or think fiber is automatically more expensive, not realizing that in areas where there is competition the fiber providers will actually give you good pricing, and there actually are a lot of fiber providers. It's just a matter of the providers thinking they'll earn back their investment quickly because building out fiber is so expensive, which means they don't actually move into nearly as many areas to provide competition. If fiber moves in where there's no competition, it's not necessarily cheap. The big national companies like Comcast of course are also arrogant. The cable providers may also tend to think there is a lot of inertia, people who have had cable for a long time and just won't make the effort to switch as long as the prices just inch up and occasionally they increase speed, especially if they also actually subscribe to TV service.

Smaller providers often aren't so bad. At my old house I had WOW! (after they bought out the local cable provider that was originally operated by the city) and their pricing was actually good enough to keep me on their service despite the upload speed being much lower than fiber because I just didn't need the upload rate and needed to save money. WOW! even increased speeds significantly without increasing prices. After I moved I got AT&T fiber even though it was a little more expensive for the same download speed because I could afford the higher cost to get symmetrical speed. WOW!'s current offer is half the price of my fiber for the same download speed! There's a smaller provider that covers some of the more rural areas nearby that doesn't have any real competition, yet they offer both fiber and cable at the same price, and not much higher than my AT&T service.