My hands-on experience with AT&T Internet Air: Here’s what I learned

I often say that the best internet service is the one you never notice. With stable buffering and long load times, AT&T Internet Air never let me forget I was using it.

I have as friendly a testing environment as you will ever find for an ISP. I live alone in a one-bedroom apartment, and the list of connected devices I own is shockingly short: just my iPhone SE, Apple TV 4K, and MacBook Pro that I use to work from home. That’s not much of a load on a Wi-Fi network. If AT&T Internet Air couldn’t handle that, I’d have a hard time recommending it to anyone.

Well, I find it hard to recommend this to anyone. AT&T’s wireless Internet connection consistently delivered download speeds under 10 Mbps – a far cry from the 90 to 300 Mbps it advertises. That said, wireless internet speeds are more dependent on location than wired options like cable and fiber, so your experience may be much better than mine. (Users enabled The AT&T subreddit reported speeds in the range of 150 to 300 Mbps.)

There were things I liked about AT&T Internet Air – namely the easy setup and the useful app – but that’s like saying I like everything about a car except the fact that it can’t go faster than 25 miles per hour. Internet providers have one job: to provide a fast, reliable connection. On that front, AT&T Internet Air was a clear failure.

Read more: The best internet providers for 2024

Set up AT&T Internet Air

All told, it only took me 11 minutes to set up AT&T Internet Air. It really couldn’t have been easier. The box comes with just two items: a gateway device and a power socket. I followed the instructions in the box, downloaded AT&T’s Smart Home Manager app and scanned the QR code on the device.

The app suggested that I place the gateway device near a window and face west if possible. I was able to find a place that checked both boxes, near my desk, where I needed the fastest internet speeds possible. Once I landed at a location, the app ran a quick test and gave me approval. I was now ready to test the connection.

AT&T Internet Air Speed ​​and Reliability

There’s no way around it: AT&T Internet Air’s speeds were incredibly disappointing and basically unusable for most people.

After dozens of speed tests throughout the week, the average download speed was 5.86 Mbps and the upload speed was 9.87 Mbps. The fastest download speed I ever achieved was 10.63 Mbps, while the upload speed was 14.38 Mbps. At the same time, my $50 Connect More plan through Xfinity — advertised as 300 Mbps download — delivered average speeds of 321/109 Mbps.

AT&T Internet Air’s latency was also very high, with an average ping speed of 298 ms. That’s bad news if you plan on gaming online, where 40ms or lower is considered ideal.

AT&T says users typically experience download speeds between 90 and 300 Mbps and upload speeds between 8 and 30 Mbps. My upload speeds were within that range, but I never got close to a 90 Mbps download speed. The highest I got was 14.38 Mbps. (I used Ookla for all my speed tests, which is owned by the same parent company as CNET, Ziff Davis.)

Wireless internet such as AT&T Internet Air or T-Mobile Home Internet is inherently more erratic than a wired connection such as cable or fiber optic. Because it transmits data wirelessly from a cell tower, it is more vulnerable to network congestion and weather disruptions. This is why router placement is particularly important: if you don’t have a clear line to the nearest tower, your internet connection will suffer.

But me did have a clear line. I was able to find a spot for the router, right against a west-facing window, just as I was instructed during installation. The problem didn’t seem to be the location of my home either: AT&T’s coverage map shows the entire city of Seattle covered in 5G+ speeds, which it describes as the fastest tier.

I tried moving the router to a few different locations during testing, but the speeds never improved. In fact, it got even slower when I moved it to another room or away from the window. AT&T recommended calling customer support to help determine the best location for the device based on the nearest cell tower.

Wireless internet providers like AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon all include a caveat in the fine print stating that they may temporarily reduce your speeds if the network is congested. That might explain my test results if they all took place during “internet rush” – the hours between 7pm and 11pm when traffic is at its highest. But I tested AT&T Internet Air at various times throughout the day and never saw much difference.

How was AT&T Internet Air?

If anyone can get by with slow internet speeds, it’s me. I live alone and don’t do bandwidth-hungry activities like online gaming. I only have three devices connected to the internet: my phone, laptop, and streaming device.

But even with that minimal setup, AT&T Internet Air struggled to hold its weight. Zoom meetings at work were reliably unreliable, to the point where I had to switch to my Xfinity connection several times. When working in Google Docs, the connection would routinely drop, forcing me to wait a few seconds before I could continue writing this review.

AT&T Internet Air’s range was basically limited to the room with the router. When I ran speed tests in my bedroom – one wall away from the router – my connection slowed to about 1 Mbps download and upload.

It was a frustrating experience, and I found myself switching to Xfinity or cellular data on my phone every time I wanted to do something like watch a YouTube video from the group chat or make a FaceTime call.

I don’t need gig speeds — I probably don’t even really need 100 Mbps speeds — but I do need at least 15 Mbps, which is what Netflix recommends for 4K streaming. Unfortunately, AT&T Internet Air failed to break even that low bar.

How does AT&T Internet Air compare to other 5G internet providers?

5G home internet has boomed in recent years, and AT&T is later to market than competitors like T-Mobile Home Internet and Verizon 5G Home Internet. Overall, the use of 5G technology for home internet has been an undeniable success. A J.D. Power survey released this summer found that customer satisfaction is higher for wireless customers than for cable or fiber customers, even though they received lower performance scores.

“A lot of the concerns I had heard about fixed wireless access were that it would never be as fast as fiber,” Carl Lepper, senior director of the technology, media and telecommunications intelligence practice at J.D. Power, told me at the time. .

“But for many people, affordability trumps that. And it’s not often that you need super-fast speeds, depending on how you use your internet.”

5G home internet often reaches rural households where cable and fiber aren’t available, and it’s a significant step up from the satellite or DSL service these users are typically stuck with. And because 5G providers are primarily mobile carriers, they offer significant savings if you bundle home internet with a mobile plan.

Those savings aren’t as great with AT&T as they are with T-Mobile and Verizon, but paying $47 a month for home internet is still a good deal. If you don’t have a cell phone plan, AT&T Internet Air is on the expensive side, and there’s no guarantee it’ll make up for it with faster speeds — as my week at AT&T showed.

The Verdict: AT&T Internet Air is still worth a try in some cases

After these disappointing results, you may be surprised to learn that I still don’t want to swear off AT&T Internet Air completely. Other customers have achieved noticeably faster speeds than me — Reddit users regularly report speeds above 700 Mbps — and there’s a chance my apartment is in a particularly bad location for the service.

Unlike T-Mobile Home Internet, there’s no free trial with AT&T Internet Air, so you’ll be out at least $60 if you sign up and find the speeds aren’t fast enough. I’d still recommend going with T-Mobile or Verizon first if you want to try out 5G home internet, but AT&T Internet is still worth it if you’re stuck with limited options.