5G Home Internet?

[crgildart]

And that's a Verizon tower? You looked at Cellmapper to confirm the ID?

I confirmed it while on the phone with the top tier support. They were asking me which side of the house the box was. Confirmed that IS our Verizon 5G tower. I wonder of some idiot SHOT at it and damaged it. This neighborhood is a war zone.. I'll find out tomorrow when the new modem/router arrives. Betting it won't find a signal either.. because there is no Home 5G device signal anymore.. That thing's busted..

 

[crgildart]

OK productive day at the porch for packages. New Verizon box arrived around 10:30. It's working but my VPN has dropped briefly about 4-5 times for a minute or two so far today.. Meh..

Specrtum modem arrived around 2:15 so I set that up. In typical Spectrum (er umm rectum?) form the app and account login said. "Sorry there is an outage in your area and service should be restored by 3pm". The message was posted at 10am. So, another meh.. It's up now though.

Stats..
Verizon's pulling down 300 MPS and pushing up 20.. $25/month for 2 years
Specrtum's pulling down 450 MPS and pushing up 19.. $49.99/month.

I was paying $94.99/month for Spectrum before this switcharoo circus started in early April. Now paying $75 a moth for BOTH!

 

[cosmoliu]

I'll need to give Spectrum a call...

 

[crgildart]

Someday .... when the Verizon 5G tower here and gear is sending me the full 1G they're getting right now in NYC that will be amazing. But gotta say it's really less stressful having two high speed ISPs in house for what I was paying for one and still having to hotspot my phone a couple times a month.. I'm gonna play them off eachother when the introductory rates start going up at the end of the promotion..

 

[cosmoliu]

Looking for any updates some of you with experience here might have. I initially had a passing interest in this thread, but now I am looking at a job where a backup internet connection is a prerequisite. A fast download connection is crucial for this job, upload not so much. My Spectrum cable connection (@400+ MB/sec) has been ~100% dependable over the last three years, and I intend to keep that as my primary. Fiber is not available. DSL has gone the way of the dinosaurs, but likely would not have been fast enough for my needs (I'm told 50 MB/sec is the minimum down speed). One of two fixed wireless providers has already told me they don't have a tower which could serve my house. The other is coming out next week to do a site survey. Verizon 5G is not available at my address. T-Mobile, because they lean more heavily on 4G LTE, says my address qualifies, stating that the speed should be between 30-180 MB/sec. They have a 30 day trial, and I plan to pick up a unit and stress test it when I have a week off the end of this month. Anyone here who could comment on T-Mobile's connection? Is cellular home internet dependable enough to be ready for prime time?

 

[Jenny]

Looking for any updates some of you with experience here might have. I initially had a passing interest in this thread, but now I am looking at a job where a backup internet connection is a prerequisite. A fast download connection is crucial for this job, upload not so much. My Spectrum cable connection (@400+ MB/sec) has been ~100% dependable over the last three years, and I intend to keep that as my primary. Fiber is not available. DSL has gone the way of the dinosaurs, but likely would not have been fast enough for my needs (I'm told 50 MB/sec is the minimum down speed). One of two fixed wireless providers has already told me they don't have a tower which could serve my house. The other is coming out next week to do a site survey. Verizon 5G is not available at my address. T-Mobile, because they lean more heavily on 4G LTE, says my address qualifies, stating that the speed should be between 30-180 MB/sec. They have a 30 day trial, and I plan to pick up a unit and stress test it when I have a week off the end of this month. Anyone here who could comment on T-Mobile's connection? Is cellular home internet dependable enough to be ready for prime time?

We’ve had it for two months now, and not had any outages or problems. My husband says he finds it a little slower for file transfers but he just logs into the workstation at work and then runs those processes locally. Teams meetings with 40ish people located both in the US and India aren’t an issue.

 

[cosmoliu]

And now they are refusing additional T-Mobile subscribers in this immediate area due to trying to balance network load.

When I checked for T-Mobile online for availability, they said:

5G home internet is available at your address – but spots are limited!​

I thought that was a marketing come-on, and was originally planning to do the 30 day trial, then put it aside until later this year when I will actually need the connection. However, if the possibility for being shut out truly exists, I'll pay the $50/ mo. to hold my spot.

 

[cosmoliu]

We’ve had it for two months now, and not had any outages or problems. My husband says he finds it a little slower for file transfers but he just logs into the workstation at work and then runs those processes locally. Teams meetings with 40ish people located both in the US and India aren’t an issue.

Which provider?

 

[Jenny]

Which provider?

Sorry, T-Mobile.

 

[Sibhusky]

Looking for any updates some of you with experience here might have. I initially had a passing interest in this thread, but now I am looking at a job where a backup internet connection is a prerequisite. A fast download connection is crucial for this job, upload not so much. My Spectrum cable connection (@400+ MB/sec) has been ~100% dependable over the last three years, and I intend to keep that as my primary. Fiber is not available. DSL has gone the way of the dinosaurs, but likely would not have been fast enough for my needs (I'm told 50 MB/sec is the minimum down speed). One of two fixed wireless providers has already told me they don't have a tower which could serve my house. The other is coming out next week to do a site survey. Verizon 5G is not available at my address. T-Mobile, because they lean more heavily on 4G LTE, says my address qualifies, stating that the speed should be between 30-180 MB/sec. They have a 30 day trial, and I plan to pick up a unit and stress test it when I have a week off the end of this month. Anyone here who could comment on T-Mobile's connection? Is cellular home internet dependable enough to be ready for prime time?

You need to understand that even your next door neighbor can't tell you what will happen at your house. If you live in a metro area, you could see 500+ mb/s. I've been with T-Mobile a year now and we started out very uneven, 20-30 downloads. Now we are seeing 30-70. But we've been improving over time. One thing I've discovered is that your VPN COULD noticeably impact your speeds. Weather, trees, and your neighbors can impact your speeds. Local events, tourism, yada yada.

That being said, we're thrilled. There's no contract and a flat rate with no mystery fees tacked on. $50/month. It's easy to try it for a short spell and see how it works for you. Since this is for work, you're going to be fussier than we are.

Definitely do not delay getting it or you will be shut out. I'm not the only person who has seen this. (I belong to a Facebook group.) Sometimes you can go to the store locally and do an end run around an online or phone denial. But locally that didn't work for my neighbor.

You will find yourself wandering around the house trying to find the best spot for a day or so.

 

[crgildart]

Update here.. Month one as mentioned the Verizon modem had to be replaced, stopped holding a signal. New one is working fine... Just to be true to form, the Spectrum modem failed about 2 weeks after installation.. So in less than 3 months, buth Cable and 5G modems have failed and been replaced here. It takes a day or three to get the equipment replaced.

This is why our only RELIABLE option is to have both here.

 

[cosmoliu]

One thing I've discovered is that your VPN COULD noticeably impact your speeds.

This is a potential concern, though can only be addressed with an actual trial. This is a line from a PC Magazine review of the system:

If you're a heavy VPN user, you should also be cautious. For all VPNs, you want to use TCP rather than UDP if possible.

I'll have to check with the IT people to see what that means.

I plan to visit the local T-Mobile store Sat morning to get this ball rolling. I hope the window of opportunity does not close between now and then.

 

[Erik Timmerman]

I was just getting ready to post a thread asking about this. Our DSL is getting worse and worse as more people move in. We are about two miles away from the fiber. Our neighbor tried to get fiber brought in and was told that yes they can do it at a cost of $10-15K per household. Yeah, no thanks. We have reached the point where the DSL will simply stop working multiple times per day. Our phone plan is with AT&T, so I'm hoping to get a hotspot that I can connect to my Wifi router and stream through the whole house. It sounds like that's what most of you guys are doing. Off to Best Buy!

 

[cantunamunch]

If you're a heavy VPN user, you should also be cautious. For all VPNs, you want to use TCP rather than UDP if possible.

We are - and we are using TCP - at least I am, not allowed to know what goes on on her work comp - but basically I have to go offline when she goes into a customer facing meeting.

/Tmob
(still beats Comcast dropouts)

 

[cosmoliu]

Our phone plan is with AT&T, so I'm hoping to get a hotspot that I can connect to my Wifi router and stream through the whole house. It sounds like that's what most of you guys are doing. Off to Best Buy!

What I'm reading seems to indicate that the 5G gizmo is a more robust solution that a hotspot. Perhaps the biggest factor is data caps on hotspots are not a consideration with either T-Mobile's or Verizon's 5G, which have unlimited and unthrottled (mostly) data.

 

[crgildart]

^^^+1. The Home 5G service is way more robust than hotspotting a phone. The signal comes from the same tower but a different bandwidth... and free of data caps and throttling slower at various levels of consumption,

If you try to run your entire home network off a standard phone hotspot connection for more than a couple days a month you're going to have an expensive time.

 

[Sibhusky]

I plan to visit the local T-Mobile store Sat morning to get this ball rolling. I hope the window of opportunity does not close between now and then.

You should be able to call them. That's what I did. Make sure you set up autopay to get the lowest price. I've seen where not doing that from the beginning takes ages to straighten out.

 

[Sibhusky]

T-Mobile's or Verizon's 5G, which have unlimited and unthrottled (mostly) data.

On T-Mobile, your data service thru TMHI (as opposed to a hotspot) is "de-prioritized" relative to their voice traffic. This means if the tower your gateway is connected to also is used by a football stadium, a bar with raves, or some other crowd attractant, your service can suddenly be impacted by folks taking selfies or sending video of the event. I'm rural and last season the Under the Big Sky Festival was on a farm and absolutely obliterated service, not to just our Internet, but also my Google Fi phone (which uses the T-Mobile network). This lasted about 45 minutes each night. (One act's set?) The sudden influx of 20,000 people was just not within T-Mobile's capability. I'm hoping they've improved things for this year, it's coming again.

 

[Erik Timmerman]

What I'm reading seems to indicate that the 5G gizmo is a more robust solution that a hotspot. Perhaps the biggest factor is data caps on hotspots are not a consideration with either T-Mobile's or Verizon's 5G, which have unlimited and unthrottled (mostly) data.

I don't have the vocabulary for this. I knew I needed a Gizmo but not exactly a hotspot. I'm looking for something with an ethernet port that I can plug into our existing wifi router. We definitely don't have 5G here. I don't know what we have. I just went to the big city and went to 5 different stores trying to get a solution I could take home today. It's one of those situations where you start wondering if you are the stupid one or if everyone else is dumb. Whichever one it is, I guess I am going to have to do something online. I figure as long as it has a trial period I can leave the DSL up for a month and see what works better. It would not take much to outperform what we are getting now.

 

[Erik Timmerman]

Does the Gizmo only work with %G signal? I definitely don't have that. I've been assuming that like a phone it can run on 3g or LTE and would just be slower, you know, like a phone. If I order a 5G gizmo will it simply be a brick until a 5G tower goes up?