Anyone testing T-Mobile’s Home Internet? I just got my gateway and am testing today. Once you find the right spot, you’ll get fairly good speeds. I’m getting 120/20mb download and upload. My current ISP can only deliver 15mb burst for download. I live in a rural area of Oregon so ISP choices are very limited. After my first day, I’m impressed. Forgot to mention I’m only able to connect on LTE, not 5G but still able to get reasonably good speed.
@Wildbill You live in the footprint of this now. I am waiting to move to it, when they offer service. Well worth a look-see starlink.com
Definitely not worth it. Monthly is twice the price of T-Mobile and with T-Mobile price is fixed at $50 per month and no hardware or shipping charges.
Update: Checked and StarLink isn’t available here yet.
Had T-Mobile for home internet for a while but my location is too far from tower so I do not get speeds like yours unfortunately. Getting better speeds on AT&T FirstNet at my location but still waiting for Starlink.
I put down the $99 deposit and waiting in line for Starlink, they say late 2022 for my location.
I’m curious about the signal power throughout the house. I tried T-Mobile home internet several years ago, but the output signal throughout the house wasn’t very good, so I quit the service. Perhaps they’ve made improvements since then.
I’m not planning to use the hub for my wireless connections. I have several APs for three different subnets behind a wired router in order to segregate traffic for main, IOT and guest networks which you cannot do with the T-Mobile gateway. Right now I sometimes connect my iPad and iPhone directly to it and get a really good, fast connection. The gateway is also mesh capable and, as I understand it, Nokia is about to or already has released a mesh node for the system.
The one I would be worried about with T-Mobile Home service is data limits. Almost ALL cellular based data plans (even “unlimited” ones) really are limited. Generally they work great up to some total amount of data (generally per month) and then you get throttled to a much lower speed.
As for StarLink, I’m keeping an eye on that. From a disaster recovery standpoint, I like the idea of having my second ISP being not dependent on anything local except power at my house (and I have lots of ways of keeping my power up). I currently have DSL and cable at the house now, and my local phone company has FINALLY been building fiber in my neighborhood. Received notice yesterday that I can order service. That will replace the DSL. When StarLink becomes available in my area, I am toying with StarLink in my truck with the ability to connect that to the house network as the secondary ISP.
Pretty sure they still throttle you? Even wired ISPs do. Some info from a quick search:
The latter sections are from the ToS that applies to their home broadband.
I think you are wrong on this, but I can’t point to any specifics. I’ve read several reviews of the system and no one mentioned any kind of speed reduction because of use. They are trying to compete with other ISPs and having any reduction in performance would be a black mark against them.
Perhaps the testers never reached the soft cap? If it even exists, but is high enough for most purposes, then it’s a non-issue.
Good to hear though, and good for you and other customers.
I haven’t had it long, maybe a week or so. However, it gets used quite a bit. One household member using streaming video nearly all day (Hulu, Netflix, Amazon.) I use it at night for the same things. Also used throughout the day for email, web, etc. We’ve already downloaded 183GB according to the stats on the gateway’s web interface.
Really hope it is a solution since the only other provider charges $110 per month for 10mb service. We’ve had them for years and the operators are really nice people but T-Mobile is a much better deal, if it works as advertised.
I love my connection with T-Mobile home internet. I have had it since March and I can’t complain at all.
Incredible numbers. Only wish mine were that good. Of course, I’m only getting LTE connection where I live but still better than anything else available in my area. Really hope T-Mobile keeps moving forward on this. Real boon for rural users like me.
Wow, these speeds are impressive, especially for just LTE. Makes me feel a little better having just switched my phones to T-mobile today, and knowing that they throttle down my 5G data and Hotspot use down to LTE after a certain cap (so I still get unlimited, but they throttle after the cap), but those LTE rates you showed are still pretty good! Faster than I get with Comcast! So maybe the throttling won’t be so bad if it’s still faster than my normal WiFi is even when it’s throttled.
I applied a couple of months ago to be notified when T-Mobile’s home internet become available where I live (I do not like being forced into Comcast Xfinity), and then this month my neighborhood got a notice that we now qualify for a Municipal Fiber line with 1Gbps up and down for $65/mo total (tax and everything, no extra property taxes or anything else)…so I’m all over that now, waiting for install. Bought a top-end mesh system to help out (thanks to @spamoni 's research and testing help with what’s good in that end and I’m now looking forward to decent internet for the first time in FOREVER.
That T-mobile option sounds awesome. One thing I was wondering, I am assuming if you go on a trip/vacation you can just take your hotspot in the car with you, and use it during the drive or wherever you stay, right? That would be sweet…though for those of us with IOT stuff we want remaining connected, I guess it’s better to leave it home, but if it does work that way, it is still a cool option to have.
Related to Wyze, my Comcast Internet is very unreliable, so my internet goes out a lot, which means my smart devices (mostly full of Wyze devices) can’t be accessed when Comcast has problems, or when the speeds become atrocious during peak hours of the neighborhood daisy chain issues. I am hoping that better internet like this t-mobile thing can improve smart home experiences (including Wyze) since people won’t be stuck to monopolies anymore, so Comcast can’t just take it for granted that people have almost no choice, they’ll have to compete for business with improving quality and experience and everyone wins here.
This is great news
I switched about 2 months ago, had Sprint before, been throttled both months.
Yes, I also just switched over from Sprint, though just today (so we could get my daughter a new phone). How was the throttling for you? Was it significant? I believe my experience will be similar to yours based on our locations.
Alas, no. The gateway is for a specific location based on availability of bandwidth.
Addendum: good article describes the service.
Your speed seems exceedingly high since the description of the service says over 100mb download and about 20mb upload. How are you getting such high speeds?
I am getting a 5G connection. If I turn off the second antenna (the 5G antenna) I get the quoted speeds.