T-Mobile 5G Internet

BryceC

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I had no idea this was a thing. I just told my parents who live in rural Iowa about it. I looked at a coverage map and they should be in an Extended 5G area. Hope it works for them because their internet service sucks. Fiber is supposedly coming to their area but it's still several years away.

Is Extended 5G decent?

It’s probably fine for streaming and stuff. If you’re rural and have this option you should 100% take it, probably the cheapest option by far.
 
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Skyh13

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Mar 17, 2006
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. I'm not a gamer, but I have read similar complaints on the web. One solution someone posted was to plug in your old router to the T-mobile router and use the old router's signal. I'm no tech wizard and can't explain the logic. I just remember it being posted.

This is interesting. It basically suggests that the issue is that the T-Mobile router is kinda crappy and is inserting a bunch of latency that a different wireless router wouldn't produce.

I would expect that the nature of 5G broadband would be cause enough of latency variations to make online gaming annoying, in which case using a different wireless router wouldn't actually fix anything. But I suppose it's possible that the T-Mobile hardware still has some problems to work through to be a completely reliable router, and if it's adding just a bit more than it should on top of the 5G latency, maybe that's enough to put you over the edge where online gaming sucks, vs. using your own wireless router that maybe has better performance.
 

aeroclone

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Oct 30, 2006
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I had no idea this was a thing. I just told my parents who live in rural Iowa about it. I looked at a coverage map and they should be in an Extended 5G area. Hope it works for them because their internet service sucks. Fiber is supposedly coming to their area but it's still several years away.

Is Extended 5G decent?
I moved my inlaws to this in an extended 5G rural area. They had been on satellite internet and DirecTV. They switched out to YTTV at the same time we swapped to TMO internet. I would consider them light users, but they have been happy with the setup. They are certainly in a marginal coverage area so the speeds aren't amazing, but it is faster and much cheaper than what they had.
 
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clonefreek

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I got it today because metronet has been pretty bad the last month. I’m getting about 200 down but the Xbox was unplayable. I’d kind of like to keep it but I can’t imagine the amount of complaining about rocket league I’d need to endure.
I have it and i get around 150 down and I have no issues playing Xbox. I think there are 2 different model routers, I have the trash can looking one and I love it. I have only had 1 issue and they overnighted me a new router.
 

BryceC

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I have it and i get around 150 down and I have no issues playing Xbox. I think there are 2 different model routers, I have the trash can looking one and I love it. I have only had 1 issue and they overnighted me a new router.

I might test it some more, and 90% of the time it was fine but we'd hit some pretty insane lag points. On Metronet our ping was about ~75, with this it was about ~125, which must have been was causing those pretty significant lag points.
 

alarson

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This is interesting. It basically suggests that the issue is that the T-Mobile router is kinda crappy and is inserting a bunch of latency that a different wireless router wouldn't produce.

I would expect that the nature of 5G broadband would be cause enough of latency variations to make online gaming annoying, in which case using a different wireless router wouldn't actually fix anything. But I suppose it's possible that the T-Mobile hardware still has some problems to work through to be a completely reliable router, and if it's adding just a bit more than it should on top of the 5G latency, maybe that's enough to put you over the edge where online gaming sucks, vs. using your own wireless router that maybe has better performance.

I dont find it surprising though. I think generally most are better off having their modem (or equivalent from tmobile) be separate from a dedicated router if they want the best connection.
 
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clonefreek

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I might test it some more, and 90% of the time it was fine but we'd hit some pretty insane lag points. On Metronet our ping was about ~75, with this it was about ~125, which must have been was causing those pretty significant lag points.
Wait, do you have just an Xbox1? I do remember i had major issues with my old xbox with Lag. Once I bought the Series X all of that went away and it works great.
 

BryceC

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Wait, do you have just an Xbox1? I do remember i had major issues with my old xbox with Lag. Once I bought the Series X all of that went away and it works great.

Series S actually, don't know if that would play into it.
 

VTXCyRyD

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Sep 2, 2010
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I had no idea this was a thing. I just told my parents who live in rural Iowa about it. I looked at a coverage map and they should be in an Extended 5G area. Hope it works for them because their internet service sucks. Fiber is supposedly coming to their area but it's still several years away.

Is Extended 5G decent?
It is working fantastically for me. The lowest download speeds I've seen are above 100 and the highest, over 700
 
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cstrunk

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Mar 21, 2006
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Quote function still doesn't work on my phone...

But anyways thanks for the feedback! It doesn't need to be super fast, just reliable and fast enough to stream something on TV and let another user or two browse the internet or watch videos on their handheld devices at the same time.

Honestly, if it could just stream Netflix without buffering that would be a big step up for them.
 

VTXCyRyD

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Quote function still doesn't work on my phone...

But anyways thanks for the feedback! It doesn't need to be super fast, just reliable and fast enough to stream something on TV and let another user or two browse the internet or watch videos on their handheld devices at the same time.

Honestly, if it could just stream Netflix without buffering that would be a big step up for them.
My family has probably had 3 or more devices streaming YouTubeTV/Netflix/etc at the same time with no issues (household of 4 with 2 teenagers). We've had it for about a month and no problems with connections.

Compared to our old DSL with 20mbps down, this thing rocks.
 
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cstrunk

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I signed my parents up for the T-Mobile Home Internet and got it installed Wednesday. I was able to walk them through the setup over the phone. They are not technically savvy at all. But got it done.

So far it has worked great for them with no issues. 38 Mbps is the slowest speed they have measured, and that was right after setting it up. Since then it has been in the 80-200 Mbps range. Crazy since they live out in the country in rural SW IA.
 
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