News T-Mobile Home Internet: How and Why I Switched

[Admin]

T-Mobile promises fast internet speeds at just $50 per month–if your address is eligible.

T-Mobile Home Internet: How and Why I Switched : Read more

 

[ThatMouse]

Oof those ping times to your ISP are horrible. Are online games even possible? Also, with a lot of WFH jobs, upload speed matters.

 

[King_V]

When you cancel, I'm almost maliciously eager to hear what Spectrum claims they WOULD have done for you, if only they realized you were no longer a captive audience...

 

[Brandon Hill_TH]

Oof those ping times to your ISP are horrible. Are online games even possible? Also, with a lot of WFH jobs, upload speed matters.

I‘m not a big gamer at all, so I‘ve never really focused much on pings. My kids play Forza Horizon 5, Microsoft, Flight Simulator and some other stuff on the Xbox Series X, and it’s fine for them. I am, however, enjoying the increased upload speeds for my needs.

When you cancel, I'm almost maliciously eager to hear what Spectrum claims they WOULD have done for you, if only they realized you were no longer a captive audience...

I canceled on Friday. The rep basically chastised me and said that T-Mobile would raise my rates, and that Spectrum could increase my speeds and drop my price to $49.99/month. Interestingly, they never mentioned anything about a $20 lower rate and faster speeds when I had to “negotiate” to get back to my $69.99 plan last month. I told her that I was tired of the games and that I was “done.”

It honestly took ten minutes just to cancel.

 

[g00b]

I wish you the best with T-Mobile! I had the same service for about 6 months. First 5 months, just a few hiccups, but was speedy and perfect price point at $50 for me. Then it went bad. It would work for a few days at normal speeds (380 Mbps+) then drop to 5 Mbps or slower. It would not always bring up the second carrier for carrier aggregation. Many power cycles, etc. I couldn't use it for audio on Teams and had to always add phone call -- lol, on T-Mobile.

Long-story short, I had to switch back to Charter. Had the same misgivings you had about their pricing. Just make the pricing nominal to begin with. Charter itself was TERRIBLE when I left. They sent me to collections for a cable modem I returned. I had to provide THEM with the receipt from their store when I returned it. They will send you these collection notices, etc. but will NOT send you a letter saying that it was their fault once it is resolved. If T-Mobile was consistent in my area, I would not have switched back to Charter -- they are my only option other than maybe SpaceX. Even though I'm in the city!

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

The worst thing about all the cell home internet plans though is that they aren't available to people who need them the most: The people whose only internet options are Viasat/HughesNet, which is unusable since Covid for anything work or entertainment related, and dial up, and where even $100 a month Comcast, Cox, or Charter 100/20 internet would be a dream. Taking this T-Mobile service, for example, and using an address in an area where the coverage map shows 5G Ultra Wideband service, it's not available.

For reference I was one of those people all my life until state laws changed and proper internet started to spread, and paid $100 a month or more to Viasat/HugesNet for less than 100GB of data and had speeds measured in kbps, and before that $40 a month for 36.6kbps dialup because the phone lines were so crap they couldn't do 56k.

 

[pixelpusher220]

When you cancel, I'm almost maliciously eager to hear what Spectrum claims they WOULD have done for you, if only they realized you were no longer a captive audience...

When you call to cancel and they ask "May I review your account" say NO. When I cancelled Verizon last year (for Comcrap) due to stupid rate increases, it took just a few minutes. Without the ability to review your account, they can't actually propose anything!

 

[JeffreyP55]

T-Mobile promises fast internet speeds at just $50 per month–if your address is eligible.

T-Mobile Home Internet: How and Why I Switched : Read more

Spectrum, no doubt. No Ethernet no me. Maybe I missed something because I just skimmed the article. . Wifi is for convenience, that's it..

 

[TheJoker2020]

I‘m not a big gamer at all, so I‘ve never really focused much on pings. My kids play Forza Horizon 5, Microsoft, Flight Simulator and some other stuff on the Xbox Series X, and it’s fine for them. I am, however, enjoying the increased upload speeds for my needs.

I canceled on Friday. The rep basically chastised me and said that T-Mobile would raise my rates, and that Spectrum could increase my speeds and drop my price to $49.99/month. Interestingly, they never mentioned anything about a $20 lower rate and faster speeds when I had to “negotiate” to get back to my $69.99 plan last month. I told her that I was tired of the games and that I was “done.”

It honestly took ten minutes just to cancel.

Congratulations

I have had to do an annual negotiation to get the "new customer price", for me it was always easy, but frustrating, and annoyed me that huge amounts of other people didn't ever do this.! What a way to treat your "loyal customers". As it was, I would have used them anyway because at the time they were hands down the best ISP here in the UK (NTL, then Virgin Media after a merger).

I now find myself out in the Styx with broadband that runs 5.5 Mb / .05 Mb whereas I previously had 150 / 20 ten year ago.!!! Still, living in the peace and quiet is lovely

No doubt I will be looking at 5G services, but so far the prices have been extreme, especially compared to the small cost today of around £25 per month including the home (landline) phone costs. Hopefully the economies of scale and mass adoption will change the landscape.

 

[jblosun]

T-Mobile promises fast internet speeds at just $50 per month–if your address is eligible.

T-Mobile Home Internet: How and Why I Switched : Read more

What a coincidence, after three or four months with T-Mobile I'm literally just about to go down to the Xfinity store and switch back as soon as I finish writing this.

I tried T-Mobile because you really can't beat that price, but I guess you get what you pay for. The service sucks. It's unstable and unreliable. It's slowest when I need it to be fastest, only approaching the advertised speeds at like 2AM. It doesn't work well with my VPN or VMWare I use for work. The modem they sent me was junk, working fine for a couple months, but then dropping connections more and more frequently until finally it just died. Their customer service has the most grating over-the-top forced cheer I've ever encountered, they make Starbucks look like traffic court. Their so-called tech support "experts" will not deviate from their script under any circumstances. Really, I've had no internet for a week and my modem's stuck in a reboot loop because workers are upgrading the tower nearby? Even though you just told me there are no outages in my area? Fascinating! Do not expect a refund if you simply don't have an internet connection for a week, or two, or more. Believe it or not I could keep going.

So back to evil old Comcast once again. It's enraging how overpriced they are, I hate the contracts, and being charged to "rent" a modem is actually insulting, but at least it works.

 

[wr3zzz]

My parents' T-Mobile 5G Home speed is at the low end of T-Mobile promised speed and they couldn't be happier. For years and years Verizon refused to connect them to FiOS because the company doesn't want to pay for the works to go from the curb to their house. My parents were stuck with DSL that only go up to 15Mbps on a good day and disconnects often. T-Mobile 5G might be only 2-3x faster but finally they have a decent Internet experience and stable at that.

 

[EDD2]

T-Mobile promises fast internet speeds at just $50 per month–if your address is eligible.

T-Mobile Home Internet: How and Why I Switched : Read more

We had T-Mobile Internet in the rural Rocky Mountains. Compared to other options (Hughes Net and Ziply Fiber), T-Mobile was fabulous. Then we moved to a metropolitan area and the service was abysmal. We live in a T-Mobile "ultra capacity" 5-G area, but the Internet was like using a 1200 baud modem back in the mid 1980s. Thus began our quest to move on from T-Mobile.

T-Mobile Internet is the Hotel California of ISPs. Yes, you can cancel at any time, but they make it very difficult to return the device.

On the T-Mobile site, when we started trying to make the return, it said very clearly that you could just take the modem by a T-Mobile store. It isn't even in fine print, but that's only the case for the first couple of weeks of use. After that, as the store manager said to me, "it doesn't quite work that way..."

After you get through the phone tree and hold period of forever, you'll get a really hard sell to keep the service, including a pitch to pass the modem on to a relative or friend. It took over 40 minutes to finally get "agreement" that we were cancelling service and returnng the modem. By the way, ask your telephone "support" person where they are located. You'll find that they are in the Phillipines, and have absolutely no "power" to even get a box sent to you. There is NO U.S. phone number you can call. (This is the norm, it appears, for most of the cell phone companies now).

So, if you're signing up for T-Mobile to "test" against other ISPs, make your decision in your first few days of use. If after a couple of weeks you decide to return your hardware, get a prescription for Xanax and be prepared to call and call and call and call.

 

[spongiemaster]

But having Spectrum internet isn’t by choice; it has long been the only option I have living in rural Garner, NC, situated just southeast of Raleigh.

I lived in Raleigh and Cary for over 20 years. Garner isn't rural by any stretch of the imagination. It has a population of 30,000, directly borders the state capital, Raleigh, and is situated in Wake county which has over 1 million people. While your particular address may have had only spectrum, AT&T fiber and Google fiber are both available in parts of Garner. I've been with Time Warner/Spectrum for 20 years (may main email address is still a roadrunner address), and only once has my bill gotten high enough to compel me to call in to get it lowered, which it did. I've never had my bill go up $15 in a year, less than $5 if it went up at all.

Last year I moved out of the "big city" about an hour south of Raleigh. Even out in the sticks where I am now I have gigabit Spectrum. Then a few months ago, I got an email from Spectrum saying I was eligible to get a $30 discount on my internet through the Affordable Connectivity Program. At first I thought it was a phishing email as I hadn't applied for anything, and I had never heard of it and so I went and looked it up to see if it was legit. I have no idea how I qualified as I certainly didn't meet any of the qualifications listed, but thanx to Spectrum making me eligible, I now pay $70 a month for gigabit internet, and I don't even have a landline bundled with it.

 

[Eric Van Boven]

I tried it in Arizona. Tested my laptops/desktop with awesome speeds, testing smart home and was fine then finally tested a round of gaming and it was atrocious. Played dota and it felt like 56k. The latency is the killer for games, other than that amazing for home.

 

[Eric Van Boven]

We had T-Mobile Internet in the rural Rocky Mountains. Compared to other options (Hughes Net and Ziply Fiber), T-Mobile was fabulous. Then we moved to a metropolitan area and the service was abysmal. We live in a T-Mobile "ultra capacity" 5-G area, but the Internet was like using a 1200 baud modem back in the mid 1980s. Thus began our quest to move on from T-Mobile.

T-Mobile Internet is the Hotel California of ISPs. Yes, you can cancel at any time, but they make it very difficult to return the device.

On the T-Mobile site, when we started trying to make the return, it said very clearly that you could just take the modem by a T-Mobile store. It isn't even in fine print, but that's only the case for the first couple of weeks of use. After that, as the store manager said to me, "it doesn't quite work that way..."

After you get through the phone tree and hold period of forever, you'll get a really hard sell to keep the service, including a pitch to pass the modem on to a relative or friend. It took over 40 minutes to finally get "agreement" that we were cancelling service and returnng the modem. By the way, ask your telephone "support" person where they are located. You'll find that they are in the Phillipines, and have absolutely no "power" to even get a box sent to you. There is NO U.S. phone number you can call. (This is the norm, it appears, for most of the cell phone companies now).

So, if you're signing up for T-Mobile to "test" against other ISPs, make your decision in your first few days of use. If after a couple of weeks you decide to return your hardware, get a prescription for Xanax and be prepared to call and call and call and call.

Yup, I had to call wait about an hour for them to figure out how to do it then finally got my prepaid shipping label. Why you cannot return in store is stupid. Then they tried charging me for the next month.

 

[jkflipflop98]

When you call to cancel and they ask "May I review your account" say NO. When I cancelled Verizon last year (for Comcrap) due to stupid rate increases, it took just a few minutes. Without the ability to review your account, they can't actually propose anything!

You know they just say that line to be nice, right? They're already in your account looking at your info before they even said anything. Saying "no" doesn't really do anything.

 

[digitalgriffin]

Oof those ping times to your ISP are horrible. Are online games even possible? Also, with a lot of WFH jobs, upload speed matters.

I was thinking the same thing about the ping times with t-mobile. But if you aren't a twitch fest gamer (ie: PUBG) then you should be good.

Because I live near the bottom of a hill, my t-mobile signal is horrid. 200 feet down the road I would have been golden.

 

[digitalgriffin]

What a coincidence, after three or four months with T-Mobile I'm literally just about to go down to the Xfinity store and switch back as soon as I finish writing this.

I tried T-Mobile because you really can't beat that price, but I guess you get what you pay for. The service sucks. It's unstable and unreliable. It's slowest when I need it to be fastest, only approaching the advertised speeds at like 2AM. It doesn't work well with my VPN or VMWare I use for work. The modem they sent me was junk, working fine for a couple months, but then dropping connections more and more frequently until finally it just died. Their customer service has the most grating over-the-top forced cheer I've ever encountered, they make Starbucks look like traffic court. Their so-called tech support "experts" will not deviate from their script under any circumstances. Really, I've had no internet for a week and my modem's stuck in a reboot loop because workers are upgrading the tower nearby? Even though you just told me there are no outages in my area? Fascinating! Do not expect a refund if you simply don't have an internet connection for a week, or two, or more. Believe it or not I could keep going.

So back to evil old Comcast once again. It's enraging how overpriced they are, I hate the contracts, and being charged to "rent" a modem is actually insulting, but at least it works.

You can get a XFinity certified DOCSIS 3.1 Modem for as low as $75 on Amazon. It will pay for itself in under a year, and is of higher quality.

 

[jblosun]

You can get a XFinity certified DOCSIS 3.1 Modem for as low as $75 on Amazon. It will pay for itself in under a year, and is of higher quality.

I probably will eventually, but then I'm stuck with Comcast, at least for a year or two! I keep trying other ISPs, hoping for something equally reliable but less aggravating and expensive.

I will say by the way, to T-Mobile's credit, quitting was extremely fast and easy, which was frankly SHOCKING to me. I got connected to a perfectly normal human being in the next city over, and she didn't drag it out, or try to give me life advice on how to be happy, or shriek about what a wonderful human being I am for being a T-Mobile customer, all of which has happened to me on the phone with their customer service in the past week. Just "sorry to see you go, shipping label is in your emal." This honestly gave me a more favorable impression of the company than literally anything that's happened up til now, including my time as a T-Mobile phone customer several years ago. Try calling 3:30 Mountain Time on a Monday, if you need to!