T-Mobile
T-Mobile yesterday launched a $ 60-a-month 5G home internet service, saying it would typically offer 50 to 100 Mbps download speeds and 10 to 25 Mbps upload speeds.
The $ 60 monthly price includes everything, according to T-Mobile, promising: “No additional taxes or fees. No equipment fees. No contracts. No surprises or exploding bills.” The service has no data cap, but T-Mobile’s home internet customers will get lower speeds than mobile customers in times of congestion.
“During congestion, customers on the Internet can slow down Internet speeds than other customers due to data prioritization,” T-Mobile said in a footnote in the announcement. T-Mobile says it should rarely occur. In its Open Internet announcement, T-Mobile said that home Internet customers “get the same network priority as heavy data users, but that they are less likely to experience congestion because the equipment is stationary and available in restricted areas.” ” Heavy Data users’ are mobile customers who experience potential slowdown because they exceed a specific limit, which is 50 GB per month on most T-Mobile plans. The 50 GB threshold is not used for 5G internet , but the home service can be delayed drops relative to mobile speeds when the network is congested, even if a home client did not use much data that month.)
T-Mobile notes that ‘[v]The resolution of video streaming depends on the available speeds, “and there seems to be no strict restriction on the video resolution. A CNET reporter who tested the service wrote:” I have hours of 4K video streamed, attended Zoom meetings, downloaded great games to install and so on, all without reporting. “T-Mobile told Ars that the typical internet speed of the house ‘is much more than the bandwidth needed to Stream 4K video. ‘
A Frequently Asked Question about T-Mobile said: “We expect most new T-Mobile Home Internet customers to see average download speeds of over 100 Mbps, and that all eligible households are expected to average download speeds. of 50 Mbps or more. Speeds may vary depending on location, signal strength and availability, time of day and other factors. “In addition,”[m]The new T-Mobile Home Internet customers can expect average upload speeds between 10 and 25 Mbps. ‘Latency is usually between 21 and 35 ms,’ says T-Mobile.
T-Mobile said customers are receiving “the maximum speed the network can offer at their home location” because there is no option to upgrade to a faster plan.
30 million homes eligible
T-Mobile said 30 million households (about a quarter of the U.S. total) are “eligible” for the home Internet service, but it is not clear how many customers the company can take on before terminating the sign-ups. You can check on this website if service is available at your address. T-Mobile said 10 million of the households are eligible in rural parts of the US, and the rest in urban and suburban areas.
T-Mobile launched a 4G LTE home service two years ago. The company already has 100,000 home Internet customers and “said it will have about 500,000 fixed-line wireless customers by the end of this year,” according to Light Reading. “Within the next five years, T-Mobile said it expects to get between 7 and 8 million fixed wireless Internet customers.”
T-Mobile also provided this PDF containing the cities and towns where the 5G home service is available. Many metro areas are included, but the service may be easier to get in less densely populated areas. Light Reading quoted New Street Research as saying that T-Mobile “would only sell capacity to fixed broadband businesses in markets where they have more than their mobile businesses could possibly use. We estimate that they could only provide 4.1 million average fixed broadband businesses. supported in markets where they have an excess capacity. ‘
“T-Mobile will take subscribers on a first-come, first-served basis until capacity runs out, and will then add subscribers as it adds capacity, [T-Mobile Executive VP Dow] Draper said, “according to PCMag.
In its FAQ, T-Mobile said: “We are working aggressively to expand T-Mobile Home Internet Service to more and more people, but currently have no specific dates by location.”
“Availability can and will change in local areas as more customers sign up in that area,” T-Mobile told Ars. “And in the short term, availability may be affected by the availability of Wi-Fi gateway until global supply chains normalize.”
5G home port
Customers receive a router-and-modem port that “converts [the] 5G signal to Wi-Fi and provides a Wi-Fi signal that is accessible to all the devices in your home, “said T-Mobile. The device uses Wi-Fi 6 together with”[m]utim user MIMO, which creates more capacity as more users connect, which improves individual speeds when many devices have access to Wi-Fi, “said T-Mobile. Customers can configure up to four network names (SSIDs) on each gateway.
To get started with your home service, start up ‘T-Mobile High-Speed Internet Gateway’, download the T-Mobile Home Internet app (Android or iOS) and follow some instructions, ‘the company said.
T-Mobile does not support use away from the address where you purchase service. “The T-Mobile High-Speed Internet Gateway is specifically for your convenient address, so you can not move it from one place to another. This helps us to ensure that the point of use meets our network standards to get you from to provide a high quality of service, ”said T-Mobile.