5G Home Internet

[tsar4]

So I've lived here for nearly 20 years, and in that time no provider has even made mention of bringing in Fiber.  All they have on their websites is "send us your email and we'll let you know when it's coming".  It's been on the north side of town (wealthy area) since I moved here and the next town south, but not a peep about expanding the service except to new subdivisions.

So I've been looking at AT&T Air, T-Mobile & Verizon 5G home internets.  From what I can tell, T-Mobile allows for wired landline (though the site isn't specific as to how), which I need to keep.  Of the other two, I like that Verizon has 1Gig speed available.  All seem to have "price locks" of some sort.  Another consideration is the number of ports.  Tough to have 3 IoT hubs and they only provide 2-3 ports.

Anybody here got any experience with any of them?  I upped to 50M ADSL (testing shows anywhere from 29M-49M) from 45M and it's been balkier than the 45M ever was.

[scoobdog]

Do you have cable in the area?  I just upgraded my ancient cable service to include internet and the cheapest service is still 100M.

[PenguinBoss]

I have been using T-Mobile's 5G internet for close to 3 years now.

A couple of takeaways:

Your internet data is essentially what's left over from their phone data. So during heavy traffic your speeds can suffer significantly.

The "Unlimited Data" they advertise all the time was not made available to me immediately. There was like 100/150/200gigs of bandwidth monthly plans. I'm not sure if they would have ever offered it voluntarily, but I went to the website options to opt into e-mail notifications several months later and saw I could switch to the advertised unlimited $50 a month plan. 

 

Quality-wise, it was decent for like a year, then there was roughly 6 months where it was quite unstable. A lot of disconnecting or speeds where it was essentially unusable. After that, though, I haven't really had any issues outside of the rare ones that all providers have from time to time. Currently my download speed is 240mbs, but like I said, it can fluctuate. I think part of why my speeds are much higher than advertised is that I live in a very rural area, so there is a lot more leftover data than other places may have. The "gateway" as they call it only has 2 ethernet ports, but you could always purchase a router. I don't know anything about their landline support, though.

[UwPp]

I have the vzw internet. Its not bad. I like it more than spectrum because thays what everyone around my house uses and it fucks with the internet so badly. Too much congestion. 

I mean at random times it might seem like it has a down time for only a minute or two. Ive hardly had any issues though. I signed up like 2 years ago? I got a $200 target gift card and a Nintendo switch for free at the time. 

🤷🏻‍♀️

[tsar4]

3 hours ago, scoobdog said:

Do you have cable in the area?  I just upgraded my ancient cable service to include internet and the cheapest service is still 100M.

I'm cable adverse.  The less wires inside or outside, the better.

[André Toulon]

im switching to fiber tomorrow. hope it was the right decision 

[Raptorpat]

we've had Verizon fios since moving in eight years ago, no complaints on the service itself

[scoobdog]

4 hours ago, tsar4 said:

I'm cable adverse.  The less wires inside or outside, the better.

Fair enough.  I haven’t had much luck with cellular internet but that’s with 4G.  The problem with 5G is the relatively short spread.  If you can spot the nearest 5G antenna before considering, that would help.

[tsar4]

39 minutes ago, scoobdog said:

Fair enough.  I haven’t had much luck with cellular internet but that’s with 4G.  The problem with 5G is the relatively short spread.  If you can spot the nearest 5G antenna before considering, that would help.

Got a T-Mobile 5G tower about 10 blocks away.  What I thought was weird, AT&T said to put theirs at a west facing window.

[scoobdog]

1 hour ago, tsar4 said:

Got a T-Mobile 5G tower about 10 blocks away.  What I thought was weird, AT&T said to put theirs at a west facing window.

Probably because it’s a long way away, like 7-8 miles in the middle UHF range.    I’m not sure they make a third party router for 5G like they do with 4G; those usually have better antennas or external antenna jacks.