T mobile is offering 5g internet for $50 a month. That would save me about $240 a year. Has anyone tried it yet?

I wonder how their coverage is in the SW?

After being with Verizon for over 20 years, I switched to T-Mobile early this year and I have been extremely satisfied with the service and coverage. I have traveled through several states in the West, Midwest and the South and the coverage has been very good. Of course, like any other carrier, coverage may not be as good in the areas where you live and spend most of your time so it is important to check the coverage.

Two things1. T-Mobile is great when you have signal, if no it's zero! It's all or nothing.2. You need to buy their 5G box and the SIM card for the data line for the box.T-Mobile M2000 HotSpotA friend at my membership campground wanted to work on line and the campground's WIFI was poor to non existent. He bought the above and was very happy with it. He said it was very user friendly to set up and use.

I've used the hot spot on my Samsung S20 and have not been real happy. If my wife is also on a hotspot on her phone, then mine slows down or drops. I'm thinking of getting then system I mentioned above next camping season.

Mayor30 wrote:T mobile is offering 5g internet for $50 a month. That would save me about $240 a year. Has anyone tried it yet?I just bought that $50/50GB plan a couple weeks ago on a trip up and down the west coast. I bought it when a hotel I was staying at had abysmal wifi, and the T-mobile hotspot was far better than the hotel wifi... so far I've been very pleased.I'm using their Franklin T9 hotspot (they were out of stock on their new 5G hotspot, the salesman at the store said that he'd never seen one in person and didn't know when they'd be available). With good signal, I see around 20 - 40mbit/second of downstream bandwidth and up to 15mbit upstream. Right now I have 1 bar of signal strength and still see around 6mbit/sec downstream which is quite usable.My car has an AT&T hotspot built-in, but the T-mobile hotspot has been much faster, so I've been using the T-mobile hotspot instead of the car, and I'll probably stop paying for the car's hotspot and will use the T-Mobile in the RV and any time I go on long trips.

T mobile Internet | Good Sam Community

34 Replies

Thermoguy
Explorer II
Nov 14, 2021
chuckbear wrote:
If the OP is referring to the HomeInternet service, this is NOT a hotspot. It is a high speed modem for home use only. It can not be moved. We have just signed up for it but have not yet received the equipment. It does not have data caps and is not throttled. Speeds are supposed to range from 50 to 100 mbps. Chuck

This is what I got, but since we have a bad signal, it is in and out. I'm taking it back.

Thinking about getting a cell booster for the house, then I will try again. Only problem is a good cell booster is about $1K... Not sure I want to pay that much to still have the issues that come with a cell modem.
1492
Moderator
Nov 13, 2021
LouLawrence wrote:
A mobile hotspot should get the exact same signal in the exact same location as your Home system got.

Not completely accurate unless you're comparing apples with apples. Home Internet router is 5G. Even at the lowest low-band reception, 5G mobile data speeds are up to 200Mbps on T-Mobile network, and the signal can span hundred square miles. The closer you are to the tower, the faster the speeds. Still faster than 4G.

The Home Internet router also has a larger built-in antenna than any portable hotspot device. I'm getting just 3-bar signal to my router though within 2-miles from the 5G tower accessing mid-band speeds.
chuckbear
Explorer
Nov 13, 2021
If the OP is referring to the HomeInternet service, this is NOT a hotspot. It is a high speed modem for home use only. It can not be moved. We have just signed up for it but have not yet received the equipment. It does not have data caps and is not throttled. Speeds are supposed to range from 50 to 100 mbps. Chuck
LouLawrence
Explorer
Nov 13, 2021
Don't get me wrong, I have had T-Mobile for years. My post was about Alexandria, VA (and certainly nowhere in Canada). Your speed results there don't change the facts here.
pianotuna
Nomad III
Nov 12, 2021
LouLawrence wrote:
Just for fun, went to Fast.com. This appears to be a fairly worthless site. It shows internet speed of 1.3Mbps but no indication of upload or download but it does confirm the crappy service considering the phone is showing a 5G icon.
I prefer Speedtest.net and testmy.net.

You can change the settings for it to do upload, download and latency (ping).

I just tested from Regina, SK:

23 mb/s download; unloaded latency 52 ms; loaded latency 553 ms; upload speed 27 mb/s

Client Edmonton, CA 174.90.223.194 Bell Canada
Server(s) Toronto, CA | Scarborough, CA

90 MB download; 30 MG upload.
LouLawrence
Explorer
Nov 12, 2021
Just for fun, went to Fast.com. This appears to be a fairly worthless site. It shows internet speed of 1.3Mbps but no indication of upload or download but it does confirm the crappy service considering the phone is showing a 5G icon.
I prefer Speedtest.net and testmy.net.
LouLawrence
Explorer
Nov 12, 2021
To find out what? The service is terrible. No test will change that.
pianotuna
Nomad III
Nov 12, 2021
LouLawrence wrote:
We are now in Alexandria, VA and have run into the worst T-Mobile we have seen anywhere in our travels. The icon shows 4G and 5G but often websites won't even open. Terrible!

Try a speed test at fast.com
LouLawrence
Explorer
Nov 12, 2021
We are now in Alexandria, VA and have run into the worst T-Mobile we have seen anywhere in our travels. The icon shows 4G and 5G but often websites won't even open. Terrible!
JKJavelin
Explorer III
Nov 12, 2021
Slightly off topic, but for my Winegard Connect2 4G-LTE, this summer I switched to T-Mobile, got their 100 gigs for $50/month plan, which is no longer offered, but I'm grandfathered in.
I had the first sim card fail,and they replaced it. Last month we took it to Estes Park Colorado, the Mighty 5 National Parks in Utah where we had coverage. We then boondocked just south of the Grand Canyon where we had no coverage (but their map shows it does). Overall, I like it.
JK