I use T-Mobile home internet every day. Here’s what I love (and a few things I don’t)

Albuquerque, New Mexico. Home of green chilies, 310 days of sunshine, the International Balloon Fiesta and terribly slow internet. Home internet was a two-horse race in the Albuquerque for years: CenturyLink DSL and Xfinity cable. I’ve spent decades on DSL watching my internet speed tests slow to a maximum of 20 megabits per second. Friends with faster Xfinity complained about the cable company’s customer service, data cap and pricing, so I stubbornly stuck with CenturyLink. One day at the end of 2022, a T-Mobile Home Internet the portal arrived at my house. Then I finally called to cancel CenturyLink.

Why did I switch to T-Mobile Home Internet?

I chose T-Mobile for several reasons. DSL was too slow. My neighbor got T-Mobile home internet and raved about it. Coincidentally, CenturyLink wanted to charge me $200 to replace my old router with a newer one. I said “No” and changed to 5G home internet.

My home Internet life has improved in my post-DSL world, but it’s not all roses and happy dances. If you’re looking for a TL;DR, here it is: I’m still on T-Mobile Home Internet and will probably stick with it until I can give Verizon 5G Home Internet attempt or until the fiber finally appears in my block. My experience with 5G home internet is specific to my circumstances, so your journey with the same service may differ. Here are the things I like about my 5G home internet and the elements that might sway me to it switch to another internet service provider some day.

Here’s what I love about T-Mobile home internet

I’ll sing the praises of T-Mobile Home Internet before voicing my complaints. The best features of the service are its simplicity and ease of use, and it is an upgrade over the outdated DSL.

The price is right

With CenturyLink, I was paying $45 a month for downloads up to 20Mbps. With T-Mobile, my monthly bill is a clean $50. This is a sweet spot for me in terms of home internet pricing. I was willing to pay a bit more than CenturyLink for a higher standard of service, but my bargain hunting mindset would argue against anything higher. I would consider Verizon 5G home internet for the same price, but competing service is not available at my address.

I expect fiber optic to arrive someday, but I’ll look into pricing carefully before making the switch. The two providers most likely to serve my address are Ezee Fiber ($69 per month gig) and Vexus Fiber ($40 per month for 500Mbps or $50 per month gig). Vexus raises rates after the first year. I’ll weigh my ingrained frugality against fiber performance when the time comes.

It’s faster than DSL

This may seem like faint praise, but T-Mobile gives me much better speeds than I was getting from DSL. My best speed test results net max download speed of 200Mbps, 10x what I was getting on a good day with DSL. Speeds may vary due to network congestion and gateway placement. I have some complaints about the speed, but we’ll talk about that later.

The terms are simple

I don’t like complexity when it comes to broadband plans. I don’t want to calculate equipment rental fees or calculate fines for exceeding a data cap. I especially don’t want to be bound by contract. I just want home internet and have the freedom to try another ISP. T-Mobile ticks the box for simplicity. There are no facility fees, data caps or contracts.

It’s mom approved

My mother lives six blocks from me. She also had CenturyLink DSL. I ran a speed test on her desktop and the best she could get was about 12 Mbps. This is not a typo. This is the reality for some DSL customers. She was paying over $60 a month and was frustrated every time she tried to call to discuss her bill. No problem, mom. We canceled her DSL and had her sign up for T-Mobile. She found a nice perch for the airlock in the front window near her computer. With a strong signal, she can regularly drop speeds of 100-200Mbps, which is very good for her low-level browsing and streaming needs. The only downside is that she receives school closing text messages on her portal, a holdover from anyone who used her portal phone number before her. It’s a minor irritation and I don’t have the same problem.

Gateways are easy

T-Mobile provides a free gateway device that combines the functions of a modem and a router. I have a Nokia Silver Gateway that is semi-affectionately called the “trash bin”. The top-mounted display is slightly annoying due to its awkward location and gets hot, but it works. T-Mobile now has newer models. My mother has a Sagemcom unit with a front display that resembles a fancy trash can. The latest gateway is sleeker and looks like an Apple product. I had no problems setting up my Nokia gateway and my mother’s Sagemcom. We were online in minutes and found the gateways to be stable with no crashes or other issues to report. Wi-Fi works well, reaching the corners of our vintage homes at respectable speeds.

Here are the not-so-good things about T-Mobile’s home internet

T-Mobile’s home internet has many advantages, but it’s not my dream broadband service. Here are a few areas where it stumbles.

It’s no faster than cable or fiber

Xfinity offers cable speeds of up to 1200 Mbps in my home. Vexus Fiber, Quantum fiber and Ezee Fiber is slowly rolling out in Albuquerque, but not yet in my historic neighborhood. Fiber customers can access symmetrical gig speeds that I am extremely envious of. T-Mobile Home Internet offers typical speeds of 72-245Mbps, well below the offerings of local cable and fiber internet service providers. The good news is that I’m not a gamer (let’s ignore my Nintendo Wii obsession) so I just need enough flash to surf and stream. I don’t mind faster downloads and uploads when moving large music, video and image files.

Strong signals may be elusive

T-Mobile’s 5G Internet service is subject to the same pitfalls you find with phone service. Sometimes you are in a place with a weak signal. Sometimes that place is your own home. My neighbor, the first person I knew to get on board with 5G home internet, gets a strong signal on the west side of his house. Next door, the best I can get is a fair signal, which equates to two bars out of five on the gateway scale. This means I’m missing out on the highest speeds the service is capable of.

Speeds can vary greatly

My T-Mobile Home internet speed is like the weather in Albuquerque. Wait five minutes and it will change. I just ran an internet speed test and got 16.7Mbps. It’s slow enough to give me an unwanted flashback to my DSL days. A few minutes later I’m at 94.6Mbps. Sometimes I get over 100Mbps. I usually sit around 80Mbps. My speed tests are all over the map. Part of this may be due to the 1939 building materials. of my home and my inability to get a good placement of the gateway to get a better signal. My CNET colleague Eli Blumenthal also encountered speed issues when testing the service in 2022. When CNET’s Joe Supan tried AT&T Internet Airit also struggled to maintain decent speeds, so the problem may be more endemic to fixed wireless service than specific to T-Mobile Home Internet.

The location of the window is inconvenient

T-Mobile recommends placing your gateway “near a window or high up on an upstairs or bookshelf.” When I had DSL, my router sat in my home office on a nifty little custom shelf. It was unobtrusive and out of the way. My T-Mobile gateway visited every single window in my house looking for a strong signal. It is now in my living room with the silver “trash bin” perched on the windowsill. I still have solid Wi-Fi coverage around my home, but a piece of internet equipment sitting in my window isn’t my ideal home decor.

Final thoughts on my T-Mobile Home Internet experience

Thinking of dipping your toes into T-Mobile home internet? Consider whether this is an upgrade from your current service. If you’re crawling along with DSL, this might be a smart move. If you need constant and super fast speeds, especially for gaming, then look for cable or fiber optic. I’m not a T-Mobile phone customer, but mobile users can connect to eligible phone plans to save extra on home internet. That might be enough to sway price-conscious shoppers to 5G internet service.

There is an element of experimentation with 5G home internet. You don’t know how well it will work for you until you try it, so take advantage of T-Mobile’s 15-day money-back trial. I’m not in love with my home internet, but at least I like it and it’s a better connection than I had with DSL.