5G Home Internet?

[crgildart]

Just opened the box and set one up. Seems like a phone hotspot, even has it's own phone number. But for $25/month worth trying out. Still have Spectrum/RoadRunner/TimeWarnerCable modem running. Will decide which to keep in a couple weeks and return the other.

Both pulling down about 350MPS and both pushing up about 20MPS, comparable speeds.. Specturm with a good Wifi router does have some dead spots. The Verizon cube is easier to move around. I guess we could take it while traveling too..

Anybody else make the leap to 5G home Wifi yet?

 

[scott43]

So you're doing internet via external 5g cell service? 350mbit is good. I didn't expect that level of speed. Your services down there are so much better and cheaper. It's a possibility for folks here in rural areas. I'll wait to see how it shakes out before contemplating a change.

 

[Jenny]

We just did this last week, too. Definitely faster than our cable internet and $50/month instead of $75.

 

[Sibhusky]

We've been on T-Mobile for almost a year. Totally satisfied. Our only other alternative was the 3.0 meg DSL from Century Link we had for 18 years. We ran them both for three months before discontinuing that because we can never go back. New people are only being offered 1.5 even though previous residents of the same house had 3.0.

Some days I'm think it's"slow" and run a speed test and 99% of the time that slow service will be above the DSL. And at 50% of what we were paying.

However, based on what I've heard in my T-Mobile group on Facebook, you might not be happy with gaming on fixed wireless. Apparently latency is an issue.

 

[anders_nor]

mps? do you mean mbps?

major downsize vs fiber is latency.

 

[Saintsman]

I use my phone 5g as a hotspot for the odd occasion when my fibre 1Gbps goes down. Usually get around 850Mbps.

As others have noted the bandwidth is fine, but the latency is noticable on Webex/Teams/Zoom, and that's in the UK where the distances everything has to travel are far shorter.

 

[johnnyvw]

We just closed on our house south of Raleigh and has Spectrum install service...we will be very interested to hear what you think about the 5G service. We are used to 1 gig speed here in PA,so 200 MBPS was a bt of a disappointment

 

[scott43]

Many rural areas here have no high speed options. Even in urban areas our internet is monopolistic and expensive. I pay about $60mth CDN for 15mbit service. The compound up north costs about the same for 5mbit. We do have direct los to a cell tower however...

 

[Saintsman]

Yeah. even US costs or data (fixed or mobile) are relatively high compared to UK. I've seen Canadian costs and lack of options and wince every time I do

 

[scott43]

Yeah. even US costs or data (fixed or mobile) are relatively high compared to UK. I've seen Canadian costs and lack of options and wince every time I do

We have a few companies/families in this country who are very skilled at lobbying the government for continued advantage, not just in telecom.

 

[crgildart]

So you're doing internet via external 5g cell service? 350mbit is good. I didn't expect that level of speed. Your services down there are so much better and cheaper. It's a possibility for folks here in rural areas. I'll wait to see how it shakes out before contemplating a change.

I use my phone 5g as a hotspot for the odd occasion when my fibre 1Gbps goes down. Usually get around 850Mbps.

As others have noted the bandwidth is fine, but the latency is noticable on Webex/Teams/Zoom, and that's in the UK where the distances everything has to travel are far shorter.

OK it's sorta better than just hotspotting from a phone. There is a seperate guest login and password and I can see full network logins just like with our WiFi router. Setup and support didn't go well though. Easy to set up, but when I logged in to the web portal to change the Wifi Name and password it wouldn't work, tried two different browsers and three chat techs who were obviously just playing telephone with their own chatbots.. Last one tried to tell me that function is disabled for our model of modem/router.

When the last one told me to try "Internet Explorer" I laughed and told him we were done with them and I'd call Verizon directly if I was unable to sort it out on my own..

They refused to schedule a home support visit because we're on the cheap plan. But I refused to do a full factory reset on the equipment I had just unboxed because it was seemed to be working, back end management cloud seemed to be the problem You do get what you pay for.

Wife was able to do it logged in to her MyVerizon app on android phone. I loaded the same app on my android phone and got the same error I git via the web browsers.

But hey, for $25 a month as long as someone has the ability to manage the wifi passwords we're probably going to keep it.

Running it on my work computer today, Wifi Printer is working too..

 

[tball]

Wife was able to do it logged in to her MyVerizon app on android phone. I loaded the same app on my android phone and got the same error I git via the web browsers.

But hey, for $25 a month as long as someone has the ability to manage the wifi passwords we're probably going to keep it.

Thanks, is Verizon only $25/month? Do you know if there is a data cap?

 

[cantunamunch]

*watches @tball 's posts in particular because interested in using on ski travel*

 

[crgildart]

Thanks, is Verizon only $25/month? Do you know if there is a data cap?

No data cap, $25/month for 2 year contract.. 30 day trial period.. I think they only start to slow down the regular phone hot spots after X gigs per month with X being variable depending on your sell plan. But the 5G hoe internet brick phone is unlimited..

And ya, we may take it with us when traveling.

Cable and fiber are about to be majorly disrupted harder than you can say AOL..... My major network infrastructure employer has been expecting this for about 5 years now. It's definitely happening now assuming planes don't start dropping like flies around major airports..

 

[cosmoliu]

I remember reading early on that that 5G speeds are only available in a very limited swath of real estate- crazy fast on one corner of the street, while snail's pace on another. Has the roll-out made 5G main stream enough to make this a 2022 fact of life?

 

[Sibhusky]

It is definitely subject to trees, buildings, weather, and local congestion. I lost both internet and my cell phone connectivity for about 45 minutes both nights of the Big Sky festival. I live in the woods. The angle of Iine of sight between me and the closest tower is filled with trees. The line of sight between me and a distant tower in Kalispell is tree-free. So I get better speeds when I connect to the tower 14 miles away than to the one two miles away. They are both the same direction so trying to position the gateway slightly differently is useless. I found it easier to find the best location to position the gateway if I used the Signal Strength app on my phone than the gateway itself which only shows bars.

Any coverage map will show my house as either being marginal or non-existent connectivity to T-Mobile, which is why we tested it for a full three months. But we are thrilled with 50mbps. My neighbor somewhat up the hill from me gets 130 mbps. We are also thrilled with $50/month. No contract, no data caps, no extra fees. Throttling is only when congestion occurs, as voice calls are prioritized.

My next door neighbor put in Starlink because Centurylink would only sell him 1.5. But he has trees and a hill to his north and gets constant breaks in connectivity. And now they are refusing additional T-Mobile subscribers in this immediate area due to trying to balance network load.

 

[crgildart]

I remember reading early on that that 5G speeds are only available in a very limited swath of real estate- crazy fast on one corner of the street, while snail's pace on another. Has the roll-out made 5G main stream enough to make this a 2022 fact of life?

We'd been begging Google, AT&T etc to lay fiber on our block for the past 3-4 years. Our patch is one of the poorest, multi family zoned little sections near the college campus so literally EVERYONE around us within 3 blocks has had fiber infrastructure for at least two years. Verizon adding a 5G signal tower near our home was sweet Karma to the companies who ignored our money all these years.. and especially to Spectrum who gouged the hell out of us knowing we had no other true high speed options.. while offering those people 3 blocks away (people I know) significantly lower rates for the same service due to more competition a stone's throw away..

Sweet justice is finally being served if those cable and fiber companies crash and burn now.

 

[Jenny]

What speed test are people using? I get vastly different results using google's speed test vs ookla. But real world is, I don’t notice anything different than before - it's just the two of us on our devices, plus the streaming tv.

 

[Sibhusky]

I've used probably 8 different ones, but most seem to agree with the popular Ookla one. The FCC speed test, which has nice charts always seems to be a lower speed than pretty much everything else. The speed test on my Google Nest router doesn't work at all half the time

 

[crgildart]

What speed test are people using? I get vastly different results using google's speed test vs ookla. But real world is, I don’t notice anything different than before - it's just the two of us on our devices, plus the streaming tv.

Speed tests will also vary based on the device that you are checking them from.. Checking the speed directly from your router/access point will give the full speed that your home/office is receiving from the provider. Checking it vi a phone or computer connected to that access point will only show what that device has carved out at that moment from the total available.. Rest is shared with other connected devices, TVs, Ring/Nest devices, other computers and phones, etc all add back up to that total pull at the access point itself..