T-Mobile Home Internet: Revisiting 5G connectivity for the home after two years

[JamesJones44]

Spectrum also needs to have better service. I work from home and lose my internet connection daily. Sometimes I can drop for upwards of 15 minutes.

Maybe it's a regional issue they are not addressing? I've had them for 6 years and I have never had an outage in San Diego (honestly not one). I can only speak to their internet service as I have never had their TV service or Cell service (though I'm pretty sure their cell service is just Verizon under the covers).

 

[SyCoREAPER]

I hate calling shiz Unlimited when it's not really.
I almost considered it the other day but 1.2TB is nothing in 2024 unless you have zero alternatives or use this supplementary.

 

[jeremyj_83]

Maybe it's a regional issue they are not addressing? I've had them for 6 years and I have never had an outage in San Diego (honestly not one). I can only speak to their internet service as I have never had their TV service or Cell service (though I'm pretty sure their cell service is just Verizon under the covers).

In my area Spectrum was better when it was Time Warner. As always these corporate mergers end up hurting the consumer.

 

[ikjadoon]

No it is them changing my IP address every 12 hours because their DHCP lease is so short.

That must be very annoying.

We used to have a lot of outages with Spectrum (but not daily, though; maybe monthly?), but after we complained for months, Spectrum re-ran the line and gave us Spectrum's newer DOCSIS 3.1 modem (which is free, we later found out), it's been rock-stable.

We've had more power outages than Spectrum outages. Knocking on wood. Coax is a relatively maintenance-heavy versus 100% fiber networks, so Spectrum needs to be on top of it.

//

Now, we do have Spectrum Business at another location and that is flakier. A few months ago, we had a near-week-long outage, apparently due to this high-split upgrade, but it's been stable since with just a minute or two outages every month.

 

[ikjadoon]

I hate calling shiz Unlimited when it's not really.
I almost considered it the other day but 1.2TB is nothing in 2024 unless you have zero alternatives or use this supplementary.

1.2 TB is not much, honestly.

At home (no cloud backups yet): 1.59 TB / month average
At work (with cloud backups): 1.58 TB / month average

We'd be throttled every month under T-Mobile

// for some hard data

https://openvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/OVBI_4Q23_Report_v3.pdf

• 21.6% consume over 1 TB / month
• 4.7% consume over 2 TB / month
• On average, the broadband household is now at a 15:1 ratio of downstream vs upstream consumption
  • 600.9 GB avg. downstream
  • 40.05 GB avg. upstream

 

[jeremyj_83]

That must be very annoying.

We used to have a lot of outages with Spectrum (but not daily, though; maybe monthly?), but after we complained for months, Spectrum re-ran the line and gave us Spectrum's newer DOCSIS 3.1 modem (which is free, we later found out), it's been rock-stable.

We've had more power outages than Spectrum outages. Knocking on wood. Coax is a relatively maintenance-heavy versus 100% fiber networks, so Spectrum needs to be on top of it.

//

Now, we do have Spectrum Business at another location and that is flakier. A few months ago, we had a near-week-long outage, apparently due to this high-split upgrade, but it's been stable since with just a minute or two outages every month.

I just got Verizon 5G Home Plus which offers similar advertised speeds as Spectrum basic that I have right now. Worst case scenario is it isn't that good and I can finally run fiber into the house. Best case is the speed is as good as what I have now and gets better as more towers are put up and I have $40/month on my bill.

 

[Hawaii Tom]

I also tried it once before. As a T-Mobile phone subscriber, I got it for $30 per month with bank withdrawal payments. I worked fine, but intermittent dropouts. I used it to shame Spectrum into fixing my house entry cables. But Spectrum kept having dropouts randomly during important Zoom sessions. And during power failures, my home equipment was backed up by me, but their system distribution amps were not.
I reordered The Tmobile box, and hooked up an external Waveform antenna. Holy crap! Solid 400 to 700 downloads and up to 100 uploads. I back it up at home with UPS, and the cell tower seems to have UPS as well. No more glitches, TV speeds good for 8K and instant response on phones and computers. Oh, and I got the grandfathered $30 /mo rate lock just in time. Combined with YouTube TV for $73 /mo and I am all in for under $100 per month. Yes, I am totally happy!