I use T-Mobile Home Internet every day. Here are 5 things I love (and a few things I could live without)

Albuquerque, New Mexico. Home to green chillies, 310 days of sunshine, the International Balloon Fiesta and painfully slow internet. For years, home internet was a two-horse race: CenturyLink DSL and Xfinity cable. I’ve spent decades on DSL and have seen my internet speed tests slowly creep up to a high of 20 megabits per second. Friends with the faster Xfinity complained about the cable company’s customer service, data caps and prices, so I stubbornly stuck with CenturyLink. One day in late 2022, a T-Mobile Home internet gateway arrived at my home. Then I finally called to cancel CenturyLink.

Why I switched to T-Mobile Home Internet

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

My home internet life has improved in my post-DSL world, but it’s not all rosy. If you are looking for a TL; DR, please: I’m still on T-Mobile Home Internet and will probably continue until I can try Verizon 5G Home Internet or until fiber finally shows up on 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 make me want to switch to another internet provider one day.

The good things

I’ll sing the praises of T-Mobile Home Internet before airing my grievances. The best features of the service are its simplicity and ease of use, and it represents an upgrade over legacy DSL.

The price is right

With CenturyLink, I paid $45 per month for downloads up to 20 Mbps. With T-Mobile, my monthly bill is only $50. That’s a sweet spot for me when it comes to home internet prices. I was willing to pay a little more than CenturyLink for a higher standard of service, but my bargain-hunting mentality wouldn’t turn down anything higher. I would consider Verizon 5G Home Internet for the same price, but the competing service is not available at my address.

I expect fiber will come at some point, but I’ll take a closer look at prices before making any changes. The two providers likely to serve my address are Ezee Fiber ($69 per month for a gig) and Vexus Fiber ($40 per month for 500Mbps or $50 per month for a gig). Vexus increases rates after the first year. I’ll weigh my ingrained frugality against fiber performance when the time comes.

It is faster than DSL

That may seem like faint praise, but T-Mobile offers me much better speeds than I got from DSL. My best speed test results in top net download speeds of 200 Mbps, 10 times what I got on a good day with DSL. Speeds can be variable due to network congestion and gateway device placement. I have some speed complaints, but we’ll talk about that later.

The conditions are simple

I don’t like complexity when it comes to broadband plans. I don’t want to charge equipment rental fees or overage penalties for going over a data limit. I especially don’t want to be bound by a contract. I just want internet at home and the freedom to try another ISP. T-Mobile ticks the box for simplicity. There are no equipment costs, data limits or contracts.

It is mother approved

My mother lives six blocks from me. She also had CenturyLink DSL. I ran a speed test on her desktop computer and the best she could get was about 12 Mbps. That’s not a typo. That’s the reality for some DSL customers. She was paying more than $60 a month and was frustrated every time she tried to call to discuss her bill. No problem, mom. We canceled her DSL and registered her with T-Mobile. She found a nice spot in front of the gate in a front window, near her computer. With a strong signal, she can regularly get speeds down to 100-200 Mbps, which is more than enough for her quiet browsing and streaming needs. The only downside is that she gets text messages about school closures to her gateway, a holdover from whoever used her gateway’s phone number before her. It’s a minor annoyance, and I don’t have the same problem.

Gateways are simple

T-Mobile offers a free gateway device that combines the functions of a modem and a router. I have a silver Nokia gateway that is affectionately known as the ‘trash bin’. The top-mounted display is a mild annoyance due to its awkward location, and it gets hot but works. T-Mobile now has newer models. My mother has a Sagemcom device with a front-mounted display that resembles a more sophisticated 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 within minutes and found the gateways to be stable, with no crashes or other hiccups to report. The WiFi works well and reaches the corners of our vintage houses with respectable speeds.

The not so good things

T-Mobile Home Internet has a lot of advantages, but it’s not my dream broadband service. Here are a few areas where it stumbles.

It is no faster than cable or fiber optic

Xfinity offers cable speeds up to 1200 Mbps at my home. Fiber optic from Vexus Fiber, Quantum Fiber, and Ezee Fiber is slowly spreading across Albuquerque, but it’s not yet in my historic neighborhood. Fiber customers have access to symmetrical gig speeds, which I am extremely jealous of. T-Mobile Home Internet offers typical speeds of 72-245 Mbps, well below what local cable and fiber ISPs offer. The good news is that I’m not a gamer (let’s ignore my Nintendo Wii obsession), so I just need enough juice to surf and stream. I don’t mind faster downloads and uploads when moving large music, video, and image files.

Strong signals can be elusive

T-Mobile’s 5G internet service is subject to the same pitfalls found with telephone services. Sometimes you may find yourself 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, is getting a strong signal on the west side of her house. Besides this, the best I can get is a reasonable signal, which is two sizes out of five on the gateway scale. That means I’m missing the top speeds the service is capable of.

Speeds can vary enormously

My T-Mobile Home’s internet speed is comparable to the weather in Albuquerque. Wait five minutes and it will change. I just ran an internet speed test and got 16.7 Mbps. That’s slow enough to give me unwanted flashbacks to my DSL days. A few minutes later I’m at 94.6 Mbps. Sometimes I get more than 100 Mbps. I’m usually around 80 Mbps. My speed tests are all over the map. Some of this may be due to the 1939 building materials of my house and my inability to dial in a good location for the gateway to get a better signal. My CNET colleague Eli Blumenthal also experienced speed problems when testing the service in 2022.

The placement of the window is difficult

T-Mobile recommends place your gateway “close to a window or high on an upper floor or bookshelf.” When I had DSL, my router sat in my home office on a nifty little custom-made shelf. It was unobtrusive and out of the way. My T-Mobile gateway has visited every window in my house in my search for a strong signal. It now stands in my living room with the silver “trash can” on a windowsill. I still have good WiFi coverage throughout my house, but an internet device placed in my window is not my ideal interior.

My final thoughts on my internet experience with T-Mobile Home

Are you thinking about dipping your toes into T-Mobile Home Internet? Consider whether it is an upgrade to your current service. If you go along with DSL, it can be a smart move. If you need consistent and super-fast speeds, especially for gaming, look to cable or fiber optic. I’m not a T-Mobile phone customer, but mobile users can bundle with eligible phone plans for additional home internet savings. That could be enough to tip budget-conscious shoppers to 5G internet service.

There is an element of experimentation with 5G home internet. You won’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 that’s a better relationship than I had with DSL.