My T-Mobile 5G Home Internet Experience: 5 Things I Love and a Few I Don't
Albuquerque, New Mexico: home of green chiles, 300 days of sunshine, the International Balloon Fiesta... and achingly slow internet. Of the top 100 cities in the US, Albuquerque ranks 85th, according to data from Ookla. (Disclaimer: Ookla is owned by Ziff Davis, the same company that owns CNET.) Home internet was a two-horse race in Albuquerque for years: CenturyLink DSL and Xfinity cable. I spent decades on DSL, watching my internet speed tests march slowly up to a maximum of 20 megabits per second. Friends with faster Xfinity bemoaned the company's customer service, data caps and prices, so I stubbornly stuck with CenturyLink. One day in late 2022, a T-Mobile 5G Home Internet gateway arrived at my house. After that, I finally called to cancel CenturyLink.
Why I switched to T-Mobile 5G Home Internet
I went with T-Mobile for several reasons. DSL was too slow. My next-door neighbor got T-Mobile 5G Home Internet and raved about it. Coincidentally, CenturyLink wanted to charge me $200 to replace my old router with a newer one. I said, "Nope," and changed to 5G home internet.
My home internet life has improved in my post-DSL world, but it's not all roses and happy dances. If you're looking for a TL;DR, here you go: I'm still on T-Mobile 5G Home Internet and will probably stick with it until I can give Verizon 5G Home Internet a try or until fiber finally shows up on my block. My experience with 5G home internet is specific to my circumstances, so your journey with the same service may differ. Here are things I like about my 5G home internet and the elements that may drive me to switch to another internet service provider someday.
What I love about T-Mobile 5G Home Internet
I will sing the praises of T-Mobile 5G Home Internet before I air my grievances. The service's best features are its simplicity and ease of use and it represents an upgrade over outdated DSL.
T-Mobile/CNET
The price is right
With CenturyLink, I was paying $45 per month for downloads up to 20Mbps. With T-Mobile, my monthly bill is a straight $50. That's a sweet spot for me regarding home internet pricing. I was willing to pay a little more than CenturyLink for a higher standard of service, but my bargain-hunting mindset would balk at anything higher. I would consider Verizon 5G Home Internet for the same price, but the rival service is unavailable at my address.
Locating local internet providers
I expect fiber to arrive someday, but I'll scrutinize the pricing before I make a change. The two providers most likely to service my address are Ezee Fiber ($69 per month for a gig) and Vexus Fiber ($40 per month for 500Mbps or $50 per month for a gig). Vexus raises rates after the first year. I'll weigh my ingrained frugality against fiber performance when the time comes.
It's faster than DSL
That might seem like faint praise, but T-Mobile provides me vastly better speeds than I was getting from DSL. My best speed test results net top download speeds of 200Mbps, 10 times what I got on a good day with DSL. Speeds can be variable thanks to network congestion and placement of the gateway device. I have some speed complaints, but we'll talk about that later.
Terms are simple
I don't like complexity when it comes to broadband plans. I don't want to calculate equipment rental fees or figure out overage penalties for exceeding a data cap. I especially don't want to be tied into a contract. I just want home internet and to be free to try another ISP. T-Mobile ticks the simplicity box. There are no gear fees, data caps or contracts.
It's mom-approved
My mother lives six blocks away from me. She also had CenturyLink DSL. I ran a speed test on her desktop computer and the best she could get was about 12Mbps. That's not a typo. That's the reality for some DSL customers. She was paying over $60 per month and was frustrated every time she tried to call to discuss her bill. No problem, Mom. We canceled her DSL and got her signed up with T-Mobile. She found a nice perch for the gateway in a front window near her computer. With a strong signal, she can regularly pull down speeds from 100-200Mbps, which is plenty good for her low-key browsing and streaming needs. The only downside is she gets text messages about school closings to her gateway, a leftover from whoever used her gateway's phone number before her. It's a minor annoyance, and I don't have the same problem.
Gateways are easy
T-Mobile provides a free gateway device that melds the features of a modem and a router. I have a silver Nokia gateway that's semi-affectionately referred to as the "trash can." The top-mounted display is a mild annoyance due to its awkward location, and it gets hot but works. T-Mobile now has newer models. My mother has a Sagemcom device with a front-mounted display resembling a more refined trash can. The latest gateway is sleeker and looks like an Apple product. I had no issues setting up my Nokia gateway and my mother's Sagemcom. We were online within minutes and found the gateways stable, with no crashes or other hiccups to report. The Wi-Fi works well, reaching the corners of our vintage homes with respectable speeds.
The not-so-great stuff with T-Mobile 5G Home Internet
T-Mobile 5G Home Internet has a lot going for it, but it's not my dream broadband service. Here are a few areas where it stumbles.
It's not faster than cable or fiber
Xfinity offers cable speeds up to 1,300Mbps in my area. Fiber from Vexus Fiber, Quantum Fiber and Ezee Fiber is slowly spreading across Albuquerque, but it's not in my historic neighborhood yet. Fiber customers can access symmetrical gig speeds, of which I'm incredibly envious. T-Mobile 5G Home Internet offers typical speeds of 87-415Mbps, vastly below offerings from the local cable and fiber ISPs. The good news is I'm not a gamer (let's ignore my Nintendo Wii obsession), so I just need enough oomph to surf and stream. I wouldn't mind zippier downloads and uploads for when I'm moving big music, video and image files around.
Strong signals may be elusive
Two lights are better than none, I suppose.
Amanda Kooser
T-Mobile's 5G internet service is subject to the same pitfalls you encounter with phone service. Sometimes, you're in a place with a weak signal. Sometimes, that place is your own home. My neighbor, the first person I knew who got on board with 5G home internet, gets a strong signal on the west side of her house. Next door, the best I can get is a fair signal, which works out to two bars out of five on the gateway's scale. That means I'm missing out on the top speeds the service is capable of.
Speeds can vary wildly
My T-Mobile 5G Home Internet speed is like the Albuquerque weather. Wait five minutes, and it'll change. When I started writing, I ran an internet speed test and got 16.7Mbps. That's slow enough to give me unwelcome flashbacks to my DSL days. A few minutes later, I'm at 94.6Mbps. Sometimes, I get over 100Mbps. Usually, I'm sitting around 80Mbps. My speed tests are all over the map. Some of this may be due to the 1939 construction materials of my home and my inability to dial in a good placement for the gateway to get a better signal. Former CNET colleague Eli Blumenthal also encountered speed issues when testing the service. When CNET's Joe Supan tried AT&T Internet Air, he also struggled with maintaining decent speeds, so the problem may be more endemic to fixed wireless service than specific to T-Mobile 5G Home Internet.
Window placement is awkward
Sometimes getting a strong signal requires a balancing act.
Amanda Kooser
T-Mobile recommends placing your gateway "close to a window or high up on an upper floor or bookshelf." When I had DSL, my router sat on a nifty little custom shelf in my home office. It was unobtrusive and out of the way. My T-Mobile gateway has visited every single window in my house in my search for a strong signal. It's now in my living room with the silver "trash can" perched on a windowsill. I still get solid Wi-Fi coverage around my home, but a piece of internet equipment sitting in my window isn't my ideal home decor.
My final thoughts on T-Mobile 5G Home Internet
Are you thinking about trying T-Mobile 5G Home Internet? Consider whether it's an upgrade over your current service. It could be a smart move if you're crawling along with DSL. Look to cable or fiber if you need consistent and superfast speeds, especially for gaming. I'm not a T-Mobile phone customer, but mobile subscribers can bundle with eligible phone plans to get extra savings on home internet. That could be enough to tip price-conscious shoppers over to the 5G internet service.
There's an element of experimentation with 5G home internet. You don't know how well it will work for you until you try it, so take advantage of T-Mobile's 15-day money-back trial. I'm not entirely in love with my home internet, but at least I like it, and that's a better relationship than I had with DSL.
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