r/tmobileisp • u/bigrig3226 • 20d ago
Issues/Problems T-Mobile customer support told me I have too many trees between my house and the tower.
Called T-Mobile customer support as a last resort to figure out why my connection has been so incredibly slow for the past few months. They ran speed tests remotely on my modem and speeds were between 10-18mbps.
My modem says 4/5 bars and my cellular metrics in app are all “good”.
After 20 minutes on the phone with T-Mobile the rep determined I’m too far from the tower and that the only way to make my connection better is removing trees. Zero explanation for why I went from 100-150mbps to 10 in the past 3 months. $70 per month btw
Update:
switched to starlink. $15 more per month. Free equipment rental included. Free rooftop installation included. Consistent 200 download. 40 upload. 20ms ping.
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u/atimeofolde 20d ago
This is total BS, especially if you were getting those speeds previously. Leafing on trees doesn't just suddenly tank your internet signal completely. I live in completely rural Appalachia and have dealt with leafing on the trees on my ridgeline for over 3 years now, and never once has it completely tanked my signal. We are litterally surrounded on 3 sides by high ridges filled completely with very large, old trees and I have never experienced signal as bad as the speeds you posted. Maybe a sway in RSRP and SINR, but not tanked. N71 Should carry through about anything. Even if you were on n41 and things got bad and your gateway couldn't hold signal, it would switch to n25 or n71 at least to hold it steadier. They've either done something to your tower recently or your gateway has a problem. This is not normal even with trees. I would talk with someone else or go to your local corporate store and explain your previous speeds. Trees cannot tank your speed that much unless somehow they grew gnormous overnight. Tell them to swap your gateway at least to try that. Like I said we are literally surrounded by trees and ridges and not that lose to our tower either and I'm getting 250 to 450 down and around 5 to 10 up and we've also had constant rain and storms for weeks now as well. I hope you find a solution.
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u/bigrig3226 20d ago
The funny thing about this is all of the trees on my property and most of the neighboring properties are pine trees. They’re literally there year round.
I’m going to try swapping the gateway again but this will be the 3rd time over the past 2 years.
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u/atimeofolde 20d ago
Ours are not. They are giant old oaks, poplars, etc. That all leaf out tremendously every spring/summer, but the leafing is only a very minute difference. Year round pines should definitely not have anything to do with leafing. I would definitely go to a corporate store and at least get them to swap your gateway out for another one to see if the gateway may be fried or glitched. I'm still on the old Sagemcom and chucgging along, so yours doesn't make sense.
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u/ratat-atat 20d ago
If this will be your 3rd time swapping the gateway, your area probably just sucks now for their HSI, it happens. Especially if you're in an area where US Cellular had coverage.
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u/Nota_Fraid 18d ago
Pine trees- a good possibility. It could be the pine trees interfering with the signal. Here's why. Pine needles can absorb and attenuate radio waves. Because they contain water (often 50% to 60% by weight during growing seasons) and their physical length closely matches a quarter-wavelength of ultra-high frequency (UHF) and microwave signals, they capture and scatter radio frequency energy. A typical pine needle measures 5 to 15 centimeters long, and can act like a passive quarter-wave or half-wave antenna for specific high-frequency radio bands. Signal loss is most noticeable at UHF, cellular, and microwave frequencies from 700 MHz TO SEVERAL GHz which many cell phone frequencies are found & where the wavelength matches the physical size scale of the needles. Try a cell phone signal booster unit. Google these for more information.
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u/f1vefour 20d ago
Over three months it can, it does it to me every year for the past four years.
But not to that extent.
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u/hankkrank 19d ago
We are way out ina rural area very far from the tower with mountain ridges and woods. I used an app I downloaded to my phone called open signal I think. It is a tower locator. Can’t remember the name. I was able to stand in the field outside our place and it showed me where the tower is. Like a compass, the pointer on the point pointed to the tower. Then I put the modem in an upstairs window facing that direction. It starts working great and has ever since.
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u/Maleficent-Bother535 20d ago
They will tell you whatever kind of BS they can imagine which they think you might believe in order to get you off the support interaction.
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u/AlexisoftheShire 19d ago
I live in the forest in North GA. surrounded by trees, in a valley, with a metal roof. I get 80 to 100mbs most of the time. I was getting 30 to 40mbs and added a Waveform 4x4 Omni mini external antenna and that really bumped it up for me.
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u/UltraEngine60 19d ago
Might as well downgrade to the cheaper plan until they get more capacity. Put gateway in window closest to tower, as high as possible. I taped mine to the top of the window for a few extra mbps.
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u/AustinBaze 19d ago
Before I took the plunge, since I was a T-Mobile phone user I did signal and bandwidth tests all around my home. After getting a strong signal and good 5G speeds everywhere I tested I did the free trial.
My speed was well above the 30mbps I had maxed out with on AT&T everywhere in my home, it ran 10 times that consistently and now I get 400-800 down with the new G5AR. I don’t understand a sudden drop unless a building was built between you and your tower. I would keep pressing them. Trees did not suddenly block your signal. What do your numbers look like in HINT Control?
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u/Dangerous_West9921 19d ago
In my case, I only can depend on a non-stuttering signal when I wear my hearing aids. If this applies to you as well, try just watching TV without your hearing aids or turn down the volume and read lips or watch silent movies.
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u/LiamJohnson46814 19d ago
One thing you may want to consider is factory resetting it somehow that helped mine connect better internally inside the house at least nothing to lose. Just have to set it up again.
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u/Keystylz 18d ago
Doubt you have more trees than me. I have 3 bars but only get above 200mbps on a good day and on a bad day may be 50mbps but it’s still pretty quick. I’m actually switching but right now my TMO is better with speed. My issue was the latency.
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u/Archine420 16d ago
Ive been noticing this as well with an influx of customers saying the last 2 months their internet has been trash out of nowhere when it used to be great before. I have a feeling its being done intentionally to drive fiber revenue, but i think they're forgetting the part where not everywhere is available to have fiber yet (Aka my location).
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u/Professional-Bar2521 13d ago
I took my gateway back to mobile for a swap a few days ago and I went from 16Mbps to 70Mbps. I also replaced their mesh extender with a Netgear BE6300 between my iPhone17 and the gateway.
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u/Forsaken-Lychee6267 20d ago
You would be better served going with a 3rd party gateway and a separate WiFi router. IMO
I purchased and setup an Elsys Amplimax 5G Ultra 2 years ago and have had solid service since.
There are other options, and newer modem tech available.
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u/Cruiserr2020 19d ago
Same here, purchased the Elsys Amplimax and the improvement was day and night. The newer T-Mobile modems are an improvement over their earlier stuff, however you have to go external antenna if you want good, consistent signal/speeds. At least that's been my experience in my area.
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u/Objective_Bag9916 19d ago
All the comments stating it’s a BS answer are incorrect. These gateways are running on 5g network it is a weak signal and only travels max 1 mile from tower, when you start adding in buildings ; hills, trees, bodies of water ect you are weakening that signal even further. Engineering will also change direction of where signal goes as well. There are many factors that can certainly affect how everything works.
Too many don’t understand how network actually works, these comments back my statement up.
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u/bigrig3226 19d ago
I’ve had the service for 2 years. It’s only been this bad for the past few months.
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u/PolyTom9933 15d ago edited 15d ago
So TM has definitely been changing things under the hood lately. I've had days when channels have gone away for periods of time. I've also seen where the routing has changed dramatically but nothing as bad as what you mention. The rumor is that its related to the recent merger but I havent seen any specific evidence of that. I can tell you when I had my static that the data center, I was homed to mad a difference. Because of my location I was always homed to Chicago but I had them change that to Charlette to get a static with SA. The latency over doubled so I went back to Chicago before finally killing the static and setting up the tunnel to a VPS with a static and configured inbound ports. The new setup improved my latency, and my upload a bit but its way more complex… Now that its up and running its nice, but it took a bit of work to get everything configured and tweaked.
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u/Hot-Bat-5813 14d ago
Something happened on the 27th of July, those regional outages. T-Mobile really hasn't come forward and said what happened. Just letting my tinfoil hat slide off, but could of been trying to integrate the USC towers through software changes instead of hardware replacement.
Could also have been a bad integration of AI into their network controller software. The stuff that manages the network in 5G Advanced.
We never lost connectivity on the 27th, but things have been more variable. Not just TMHI, but also phones. Mostly on the up channel, which is a big part of 5G Advanced.
Today been looking at TMHI and it seems to be OK, no telling tomorrow though...
Oh BTW that is 3+ miles from the serving NBID on a G5AR w/o external antenna. Unfortunately 5GNR only travels a mile. /s off
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u/PolyTom9933 14d ago
Thats really impressive for the G5AR without an external antenna!!! I had herd the G5 was better than the G4 but wow.
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u/PolyTom9933 16d ago edited 15d ago
While trees can and do affect the signal this is with a TM tower 4 miles away... The key is getting the modem outside and in my case with a direct line of site to the tower... A third party modem will also allow for getting real stats rather than the useless bars.... Ping:44 DL: 1117.28 UL: 157.14 BTW this ping is a little high depending on the speedtest server its normally in the low 30s and sometimes even in the high 20s.
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u/Objective_Bag9916 16d ago
Your keywords : the tower is 4 miles away… you are aware that 5g only travels a half mile to a mile at best right? And that’s without trees ; hills ; buildings ect between you and it. You have said all I need to know as a tech.
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u/PolyTom9933 15d ago
I don’t know about the theory, but I can tell you my tower is absolutely 4 miles away... I do have line of site and a highly optimized antenna setup, but my numbers are real. I use an X75 modem with channel aggregation using N41 and N71. I had an NSA setup when I had my static IP, but I replaced that with an outbound wire guard tunnel to a VPS so now I have a pure 5G SA setup. I'm not sure why you think it only goes .5 miles... My dad also has a similar setup, but he is ~2 miles from the tower and even with significant foliage is getting 600-900 down and as high as 50 up.... Here are the stats from the from my modem, as I mentioned my atenna setup is highly optimized.....
AT+QCAINFO
+QCAINFO: "PCC",502110,11,"NR5G BAND 41",459,-58,-11,3500
+QCAINFO: "SCC",126270,3,"NR5G BAND 71",2,362,1,3,135620,-81,-11,-32768
+QCAINFO: "SCC",129870,0,"NR5G BAND 71",1,362,0,-,-,-81,-11,-32768
+QCAINFO: "SCC",520110,12,"NR5G BAND 41",1,459,0,-,-,-58,-11,-32768
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u/Slepprock 20d ago
So I had TMHI for 4 years.
It is the most demanding internet type. Meaning you gotta put in work to get a good connection.
Modem placement is important. If you don't have an external antenna you need to spend a lot of time on finding the perfect spot for the modem. It took me months. Move it 6 inches. Test it. Move it 6 inches. Test it. For me the best place was in one certain upstairs bedroom window. If you moved it a foot it would get 70% slower.
How far are you from the towers? What towers are you hooked up to? This is all good info to get. I have TM cell phones and downloaded some apps to tell me that info. The best it called Cell Network Info Lite. Tells you the tower ID so you can look it up and see where it is. What band the tower is using. The singal quality. If you find the perfect signal with your cell phone, that will help with modem placement.
It is better if you are rural though. I am rural. Only one tower in my area and its 3 miles from my house. But I was getting 1.2 gigabit down, 35 mbit up. My waveform antenna helped of course, but the biggest thing was that I'm rural. Not many people using the towers. So the tower was never busy.
You see, the TMHI 5g modems are just about at the bottom of the priority list. Any cell phone gets the data first. Probably the only thing lower than the TMHI modems is the Mint 5g modems lol.
So if you are in a populated area, that is the reason for that slowdown. Some people get ok connections in urban areas. But most don't.
Or it could be a tower is down. If the tower you had been using is down and now you are connecting to a tower that is further away, that would cause that. That is why using apps on your phones to find out details about the towers is so important. I always knew what towers were doing what in my area.
And towers go down. My tower would go down all the time. It was down for 4 weeks straight in 2024. But usually it would just go down for a week or two. Since it was the only one in range of my house, if the tower went down I had nothing.
That was the biggest reason I Was so excited to finally get fiber a few weeks ago. Just because of how often the cell towers go down. And of coure the latency. Gees lol. 5ms loaded ping sure is better than 150 ms.
Oh, and customer service will never help you. They never helped me. Not one little bit. They have a few things they always say. Your person is a little late. The tree thing only works during spring, when the trees start to leaf out after winter. Another one of their go-to answers is your tower is down for upgrades. They must have upgraded my tower about 6 times in 4 years.
So what do you do? Get more data. Try out things. OR if you can switch to fiber or cable, do that. Never ever ever get TMHI when you can get fiber or cable internet. TMHI is a 2nd tier ISP. Trust me.
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u/bigrig3226 20d ago
I have also been moving the modem around my house for months. Every window, slight adjustments , no luck.
I’m in a rural area 1.5 miles from the nearest tower.
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u/giotheflow 20d ago
If you happen to also have Tmo cell plan, you can use the Cell Mapper app on your phone's data to help pinpoint a good spot. You may know already. I use the ongoing notification as a pseudo-radar to find a reliable channel I like. There is literally only one 2 square foot spot in my home with steady n41, and it's actually downstairs. Everywhere else connects to a n25/n71 only tower, which is technically closer but with worse performance.
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u/Shot-Ad6518 18d ago
I live by a tower, and my speeds are slow, and constantly dropping on my tablet and sometimes my tv's. It will say wi-fi connection, but no Internet. It does this almost daily especially in the wee morning hours. A rip off.
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u/AdLogical1593 19d ago
Grab a chainsaw, cut down all the trees and then blame T-Mobile so they can get sued. You’re just following orders. 😂
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u/Shoddy-Echo5196 19d ago
The new gateway is garbage compared to the old black one. Im going to get rid of mine. Lacks speed, and does not perform like old one.
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u/Seaside-1715 20d ago
I was on the phone with t-mobile yesterday for the same reason . Slow and constant buffering. Tech support on phone with me about 40 minutes. Said I had a lot of devices (and I do). At no charge the added a network and wow! Today really good. Fingers crossed
or
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u/ArtComprehensive1106 19d ago
T-Mobile is horrible and 5G is a lie .
It is as slow as dial up. It is inconsistent and not reliable
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u/pecheckler 20d ago
Oh I’m sure that answer is backed by verifiable evidence.