News T-Mobile Home Internet Was Great, Until My Service Died And the Company Couldn’t Fix It

[mrv_co]

Call Center Survival 101:

"Power Cycle Please, Power Cycle one more time Please... not working yet?... moment.... OK good news, I spoke with a technician and it should be fixed in a day or two... if it isn't... call back on my day off.."

Classic!

It sounds like an issue with whatever they upgraded at the tower site not working with the Home Internet hardware. The fact that your phone and its mobile hot-spot continued to work as it should would seem to indicate that at least.

 

[jaybutnotz]

T-Mobile fulfilled its promise of fast speeds and attractive pricing, but the service died after two weeks.

T-Mobile Home Internet Was Great, Until My Service Died And the Company Couldn’t Fix It : Read more

@Brandon Hill_TH I bet I can reasonably guess why it sucks. Before their merger, Sprint had an Airwave access point device based on 3 - 4G cellular service. It was essentially the same functionality, connecting your airwave device to a nearby cell tower to provide increased cellular connectivity and enhanced service. It was the 2nd WORST device I've ever used since (the ABSOLUTE WORST being Clearwire, which I tried out on a whim - and they tried to lock me into service and keep my initial fee, lol (AMEX ftw!)).

From what you describe, this is the up to date version with 5G support. Cellular towers are inundated at peak usage times and cannot handle data streams like IP can because they do not function in the way internet protocols function. Telephony hasn't evolved that much. Please set me correct if I am wrong but at it's core, POTS protocols can't overcome IP protocols until a complete overhaul of the entire infrastructure is done from the hw layer on up.

 

[spentshells]

There is no such thing as a perfect system, sorry about your experience but these things happen.

 

[Slyderule]

The Nokia 5G21 gateway device from T-Mobile is fundamentally a 4G LTE device operating on band B2. If LTE is down, it's non-functional (to my knowledge). If LTE is up, it'll try to bond to a 5G channel in band n41, and if it's successful it'll use both bands at once for additional throughput. You can check the signal levels on both bands either through the T-Mobile Home Internet app or through the gateway's HTML console page.

My point being: the number of 5G bars you're getting isn't the problem. It'll run without any 5G at all. T-Mobile is now offering a "Lite" version of their Home Internet service for areas with limited or no 5G coverage.

 

[2Be_or_Not2Be]

this could have been written by me... over 10 hours on the phone with customer service and their "tech team," three different devices, 48 hour tower outage (i live about one mile away from two towers) and absolutely no consistent coverage... i will give this inconsistency a few more days, hoping that after three weeks the system "settles down" and then crawl back to fios... good bye to all the savings, hello to working internet... fios must be so proud...

Are you kidding me - you dropped FIOS for anything else??? Cellular, cable - no way I'm dropping FIOS for anything else that is going a LOT less reliable.

If you have some bad pricing, negotiate the pricing or switch to a different 'bundle' - but wow, I'd never drop FIOS for anything less!

 

[Deleted member 14196]

I doubt that the "tower upgrade" story was true. But if it were, when a company knows for a fact that they are about to do some kind of scheduled upgrade that will leave customers without internet access for days at a time, how can they fail to inform their customers in advance? That customer service rep would have had a lot of explaining to do if I got that excuse. Asking for forgiveness rather than permission only works up to a certain point. As a side note, I like wireless things inside my house, but connecting to the outside world? Wires for me please, and lots of them.

Same. I will never go wireless for my house ever

 

[pixelpusher220]

I work for a company that services cell towers for all the major carriers. Sometimes we have to have full site outages to remove all old equipment plus the platform the old equipment was mounted on to put up a new platform and new equipment. Depending on the site conditions, a full site outage can last 1-3 days.

And you just cut off customers w/o notice? Doubtful. Especially with a new service where there may not be nearby towers able to absorb the load.

Any company with an ounce of sense tells customers if they know they aren't going to be able to provide service for a fixed amount of time.

 

[agentnathan009]

And you just cut off customers w/o notice? Doubtful. Especially with a new service where there may not be nearby towers able to absorb the load.

Any company with an ounce of sense tells customers if they know they aren't going to be able to provide service for a fixed amount of time.

In places there is enough cell site density that other nearby towers can absorb the extra connections when a site outage is scheduled. In more rural areas there may not be another site close enough to connect to. Customers get cut off all the time, I make it a point to perform a soft lock where the equipment waits for people to hang up from their phone call and pushes their phone to connect to a different cell site by not accepting any new connections. Sometimes accidents happen (pulled the wrong fiber out, flipped the wrong breaker off, etc) and whoever was connected to a particular radio get cut off suddenly.

Cell companies don’t warn customers about site outages. They might make a statement when the whole East coast goes out for customers, but not for a single cell site.

 

[gschoen]

I love this from the article :

"And telling a customer to wait 48 hours for internet service to be restored is unacceptable, especially just outside the second-largest metropolitan area in North Carolina and home to Research Triangle Park."

Like people should get good customer service based on their geography. I don't even know what the second largest metro NC area is, not that it even matters.

 

[jbo5112]

70Mbps uploads? That may be worth checking out.

I've spent years wanting to do things that require 50+Mbps, but the best I can get is 35Mbps. My spectrum may be reliable, but it's a reliable 100% failure rate.

 

[LBackover]

I have fixed this issue.

Before I explain how (its quite easy), I would like to explain that when TMo tests their towers and says it's functioning properly, they are not testing all aspects. 2 months with flawless service then the same problems everyone else is complaining about calling TMo every week for the last 6 weeks. Last weekend I took my Home Internet router to my boat in a geo area that doesn't qualify for TMo Home internet. Instantly I was getting 244MB down with ping of 31ms. Took the router back to my home where the cell tower is only 600ft from my home and nothing! Remediation has nothing to do with factory resets. Here's the fix...

Download and install T-Mo Home Internet app. BTW, If you're close to your tower switch the settings to connect 5ghz instead of 2.4ghz which is best for longer distance. Now, ROLL BACK YOUR ENCRYPTION STANDARD from the factory setting WAP2/WAP3 to WAP/WAP2. Reboots will have to take effect which the app will state. This will fix your problems to get acceptable QoS. At my registered billing address it's now 44MB down with 200ms ping. The ping could be faster but this will now work for my needs.

In my opinion as a former Major Account Manager at Verizon (all of Dupont, Sunoco and Air Products, 1000s of sites rolled up to me), on or about 6 weeks ago they pushed a software update to the tower that ceased prioritization of WAP3 encryption traffic through the local tower(s). I know its not my equipment because it all worked fine before the problem and the same equipment works as advertised or better in a different geo area.

Roll back your encryption standard and possibly change to 5ghz you should be back online again.

 

[husker]

I have fixed this issue.

Before I explain how (its quite easy), I would like to explain that when TMo tests their towers and says it's functioning properly, they are not testing all aspects. 2 months with flawless service then the same problems everyone else is complaining about calling TMo every week for the last 6 weeks. Last weekend I took my Home Internet router to my boat in a geo area that doesn't qualify for TMo Home internet. Instantly I was getting 244MB down with ping of 31ms. Took the router back to my home where the cell tower is only 600ft from my home and nothing! Remediation has nothing to do with factory resets. Here's the fix...

Download and install T-Mo Home Internet app. BTW, If you're close to your tower switch the settings to connect 5ghz instead of 2.4ghz which is best for longer distance. Now, ROLL BACK YOUR ENCRYPTION STANDARD from the factory setting WAP2/WAP3 to WAP/WAP2. Reboots will have to take effect which the app will state. This will fix your problems to get acceptable QoS. At my registered billing address it's now 44MB down with 200ms ping. The ping could be faster but this will now work for my needs.

In my opinion as a former Major Account Manager at Verizon (all of Dupont, Sunoco and Air Products, 1000s of sites rolled up to me), on or about 6 weeks ago they pushed a software update to the tower that ceased prioritization of WAP3 encryption traffic through the local tower(s). I know its not my equipment because it all worked fine before the problem and the same equipment works as advertised or better in a different geo area.

Roll back your encryption standard and possibly change to 5ghz you should be back online again.

Brandon, It would be very interesting to have your employer (Tom's) fund a project for you to test this solution for your use case.

 

[trilianleo]

I was going to respond to this but it has taken a while to get back to it. I had exactly the same experience with TMobile.

I order service on Superbowl Sunday. Got the service on the following Wednesday. It did take teck support to get the router to connect to the correct tower. But after that service was perfect for 14 days. First they sent a new router. Then claimed tower upgrades.

I stuck with them for 2 more months calling 2 to 3 times a week. During that time I would get service from midnight to between 6 and 9 am. Usually earlier. So it was definitely a buffer problem on their end that was reset at midnight. They said they elevated the ticket to L2 but refused to let me talk to anyone in L2 support.

They would only credit me for one month. Also they refused to send a pickup tag for the router and I do not have a printer.

I am sure that there is fraud involved because they are doing something to keep the service up for 2 weeks, long enough for you to cancel your old provider.

My reservation for Starlink came in. Now happily enjoying uninterrupted service.

 

[pixelpusher220]

In places there is enough cell site density that other nearby towers can absorb the extra connections when a site outage is scheduled. In more rural areas there may not be another site close enough to connect to. Customers get cut off all the time, I make it a point to perform a soft lock where the equipment waits for people to hang up from their phone call and pushes their phone to connect to a different cell site by not accepting any new connections. Sometimes accidents happen (pulled the wrong fiber out, flipped the wrong breaker off, etc) and whoever was connected to a particular radio get cut off suddenly.

Cell companies don’t warn customers about site outages. They might make a statement when the whole East coast goes out for customers, but not for a single cell site.

The point here is that 'cell' coverage has multiple redundant towers in many places...and the users move frequently dead zone disappears in few minutes of travel.

This is a fixed location device, without a plethora of usable towers to offload.

Home internet != cell phone even if it is wireless.

 

[GeekyOne]

This is why I don't believe wireless will ever replace wires for broadband.