I've Used T-Mobile's 5G Home Internet for 3 Years: Here's What I Love and What I Hate
Why I switched to T-Mobile 5G Home Internet
I went with T-Mobile for several reasons, but primarily because my DSL internet was too slow. My next-door neighbor got T-Mobile 5G Home Internet and raved about it. Coincidentally, CenturyLink wanted to charge me $200 to replace my old router with a newer one. I said, "Nope," and changed to 5G home internet.
My home internet life has vastly improved in my post-DSL world, but it's not all roses and happy dances. If you're looking for a TL;DR, here you go: I'm still on T-Mobile 5G Home Internet after three years of using it, and I will probably stick with it until I can give Verizon 5G Home Internet a try 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 things I like about my 5G home internet and the elements that may drive me to switch to another internet service provider someday.
What I love about T-Mobile 5G Home Internet
I will sing the praises of T-Mobile 5G Home Internet before I air my grievances. The service's best features are its simplicity and ease of use and it represents a much-needed upgrade over outdated DSL.
T-Mobile/CNET
The price is right
With CenturyLink, I was paying $45 per month for downloads up to 20Mbps. My monthly internet bill with T-Mobile is a straight $50. That's a sweet spot for me in home internet pricing. The average cost of home internet is around $63, and my bargain-hunting mindset would balk at anything higher. I would consider Verizon 5G Home Internet for the same price, but the rival service is unavailable at my address.
Locating local internet providers
I expect fiber to arrive someday, but I'll scrutinize the pricing before I make a change. The two providers most likely to service 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 raises rates after the first year. I'll weigh my ingrained frugality against fiber performance when the time comes.
It's faster than DSL
That might seem like faint praise, but T-Mobile 5G Home Internet provides me with vastly better speeds than I was getting from DSL. My best speed test results net top download speeds of 200Mbps, 10 times what I got on a good day with DSL. Speeds can be variable thanks to network congestion and placement of the gateway device. I have some speed complaints, but we'll talk about that later.
Terms are simple
I don't like complexity when it comes to broadband plans. I don't want to calculate equipment rental fees or figure out overage penalties for exceeding a data cap. I especially don't want to be tied into a contract. I just want home internet and to be free to try another ISP. T-Mobile 5G Home Internet ticks the simplicity box. There are no gear fees, data caps or contracts.
It's mom-approved
My mother lives six blocks away from me. She also had CenturyLink DSL. I ran a speed test on her desktop computer, and the best she could get was about 12Mbps. That's not a typo. That's the reality for some DSL customers. She was paying over $60 per month and was frustrated every time she tried to call to discuss her bill. No problem, Mom. We canceled her DSL and got her signed up with T-Mobile 5G Home Internet. She found a nice perch for the gateway in a front window near her computer. With a strong signal, she can regularly pull down speeds from 100-200Mbps, which is plenty good for her low-key browsing and streaming needs. The only downside is that she gets text messages about school closings to her gateway, a leftover 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 easy
T-Mobile 5G Home Internet comes with a free gateway device that melds the features of a modem and a router. I have a silver Nokia gateway that's semi-affectionately referred to as the "trash can." The top-mounted display is a mild annoyance due to its awkward location, and it gets hot, but it works. T-Mobile 5G Home Internet now has newer models. My mother has a Sagemcom device with a front-mounted display resembling a more refined trash can. The latest gateway is sleeker and looks like an Apple product. I had no issues setting up my Nokia gateway and my mother's Sagemcom. We were online within minutes and found the gateways stable, with no crashes or other hiccups to report. The Wi-Fi works well, reaching the corners of our vintage homes with respectable speeds.
The not-so-great stuff with T-Mobile 5G Home Internet
T-Mobile 5G Home Internet has a lot going for it, but it's not my dream broadband service. Here are a few areas where it stumbles.
It's not faster than cable or fiber
Xfinity offers cable speeds up to 1,300Mbps in my area. Fiber from Vexus Fiber, Quantum Fiber and Ezee Fiber is slowly spreading across Albuquerque, but it's not in my historic neighborhood yet. Fiber customers can access symmetrical gig speeds, of which I'm incredibly envious. T-Mobile 5G Home Internet offers typical speeds of 87-415Mbps, vastly below offerings from the local cable and fiber ISPs. The good news is I'm not a gamer (let's ignore my Nintendo Wii obsession), so I just need enough oomph to surf and stream. I wouldn't mind zippier downloads and uploads for when I'm moving big music, video and image files around.
Strong signals may be elusive
Two lights are better than none, I suppose.
Amanda Kooser
T-Mobile's 5G internet service is subject to the same pitfalls you encounter with phone service. Sometimes, you're in a place with a weak signal. Sometimes, that place is your own home. My neighbor, the first person I knew who got on board with 5G home internet, gets a strong signal on the west side of her house. Next door, the best I can get is a fair signal, which works out to two bars out of five on the gateway's scale. That means I'm missing out on the top speeds the service is capable of.
Speeds can vary wildly
My T-Mobile 5G Home Internet speed is like the Albuquerque weather. Wait five minutes, and it'll change. When I started writing, I ran an internet speed test and got 16.7Mbps. That's slow enough to give me unwelcome flashbacks to my DSL days. A few minutes later, I'm at 94.6Mbps. Sometimes, I get over 100Mbps. Usually, I'm sitting around 80Mbps. My speed tests are all over the map. Some of this may be due to the 1939 construction materials of my home and my inability to dial in a good placement for the gateway to get a better signal. Former CNET colleague Eli Blumenthal also encountered speed issues when testing the service. When CNET's Joe Supan tried AT&T Internet Air, he also struggled with maintaining decent speeds, so the problem may be more endemic to fixed wireless service than specific to T-Mobile 5G Home Internet.
Window placement is awkward
Sometimes getting a strong signal requires a balancing act.
Amanda Kooser
T-Mobile recommends placing your gateway "close to a window or high up on an upper floor or bookshelf." When I had DSL, my router sat on a nifty little custom shelf in my home office. It was unobtrusive and out of the way. My T-Mobile 5G gateway has visited every single window in my house in my search for a strong signal. It's now in my living room with the silver "trash can" perched on a windowsill. I still get solid Wi-Fi coverage around my home, but a piece of internet equipment sitting in my window isn't my ideal home decor.
My final thoughts on T-Mobile 5G Home Internet
Are you thinking about trying T-Mobile 5G Home Internet? Consider whether it's an upgrade over your current service. It could be a smart move if you're crawling along with DSL. Look to cable or fiber if you need consistent and superfast speeds, especially for gaming. I'm not a T-Mobile phone customer, but mobile subscribers can bundle with eligible phone plans to get extra savings on home internet. That could be enough to tip price-conscious shoppers over to the 5G internet service.
There's 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 entirely in love with my home internet, but at least I like it, and that's a better relationship than I had with DSL.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
3 minutes ago
- Yahoo
NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA)'s CEO Has A Great Relationship With Trump, Says Jim Cramer
We recently published . NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) is one of the stocks Jim Cramer recently discussed. After bleeding close to $600 billion in market value in January amidst the DeepSeek selloff, Wall Street's AI chip darling, NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) is once again the most valuable company in the world. The firm has benefited from growing investor bullishness about the long-term prospects of AI. NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA)'s shares closed the week 1% higher after big tech's continued persistence to spend billions of dollars to buy AI chips. Cramer discussed the impact and the CEO's relationship with President Trump: 'All CapEx go up, it's all NVIDIA. . .it's really good for NVIDIA. But of course, NVIDIA, the President talking about breaking them up, we'll get to that later. It was an out of body comment. Previously, the CNBC TV host commented on NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA)'s shares and parabolic moves: 'What is the solution to this? Look, in my forthcoming book, How to Make Money in Any Market, I have banished my antiparabola bias. I have a method I reveal of picking five stocks to go alongside an index fund with some money added each month. I state point blank that if you are in your 30s or older, you should own one speculative situation like an Oklo, okay, or a Joby. Just one. It could fail you after going parabolic. Moreover, if you're under 30, you can pick two speculative names out of five because you've got enough time to make back any potential losses. Photo by Javier Esteban on Unsplash Now, you may think I'm reckless for endorsing any of these even with caveats, but it's time to admit that for many years now, speculative stocks with great growth, they've worked. Oh, and let's not forget, they don't have to stay speculative. NVIDIA stock has had many parabolic moves, including the one that started in April. To keep yourself out of these runs because of a principle that stopped working ages ago, that's to be blind to change, and I don't like it. I don't want to be that way.' While we acknowledge the potential of NVDA as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and have limited downside risk. If you are looking for an extremely cheap AI stock that is also a major beneficiary of Trump tariffs and onshoring, see our free report on the . READ NEXT: 30 Stocks That Should Double in 3 Years and 11 Hidden AI Stocks to Buy Right Now. Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
Yahoo
3 minutes ago
- Yahoo
I Asked ChatGPT What Would Happen If Billionaires Paid Taxes at the Same Rate as the Upper Middle Class
There are many questions that don't have simple answers, either because they're too complex or they're hypothetical. One such question is what it might mean for billionaires to pay taxes at the same rate as the upper middle class, whose income starts, on average, at around $168,000, depending on where you live. Find Out: Read Next: ChatGPT may not be an oracle, but it can analyze information and offer trends and patterns, so I asked it what would happen if billionaires were required to pay anywhere near as much as the upper middle class. Here's what it said. A Fatter Government Larder For starters, ChatGPT said that if billionaires paid taxes like the upper middle class, the government would bring in a lot more money — potentially hundreds of billions of dollars more every year. 'That's because most billionaires don't make their money from salaries like upper-middle-class workers do. Instead, they grow their wealth through investments–stocks, real estate, and businesses–which are often taxed at much lower rates or not taxed at all until the assets are sold,' ChatGPT told me. Billionaire income is largely derived from capital appreciation, not wages. In other words, they make money on their money through interest. And as of yet, the U.S. tax code doesn't tax 'unrealized capital gains' so until you sell your assets, you could amass millions in appreciation and not pay a dime on it, ChatGPT shared. Learn More: What Do Billionaires Pay in Taxes? Right now, many billionaires pay an effective tax rate of around 8% or less, thanks to loopholes and tax strategies. Meanwhile, upper-middle-class households earning, say, $250,000 might pay around 20% to 24% of their income in taxes. (Keep in mind that the government doesn't apply one tax bracket to all income. You pay tax in layers, according to the IRS. As your income goes up, the tax rate on the next layer of income is higher. So you pay 12% on the first $47,150, then 22% on $47,151 to $100,525 and so on). So, if billionaires were taxed at the same rate as those upper-middle-class wage earners, 'it would level the playing field–and raise a ton of revenue that could be used for things like infrastructure, education or healthcare,' ChatGPT said. The Impact on Wealth Equality I wondered if taxing billionaires could have any kind of impact on wealth equality, as well. While it wouldn't put more money in other people's pockets, 'it could increase trust in the tax system, showing that the wealthiest aren't playing by a different set of rules,' ChatGPT said. It would also help curb 'the accumulation of dynastic wealth,' where the richest families essentially hoard wealth for generations without contributing proportionally to the system. But it's not a magic bullet. 'Wealth inequality is rooted in more than just taxes–wages, education access, housing costs, and corporate ownership all play a role,' ChatGPT said. Billionaires paying taxes doesn't stop them from being billionaires, either, it pointed out. Taxing Billionaires Is Not That Simple While in theory billionaires paying higher taxes 'would shift a much bigger share of the tax burden onto the very wealthy,' ChatGPT wrote, billionaires are not as liquid as they may seem. 'A lot of billionaire wealth is tied up in things like stocks they don't sell, so taxing that would require big changes to how the tax code works.' Also, billionaires are good at finding loopholes and account strategies — it might be hard to enforce. What's a Good Middle Ground? We don't live in a black and white world, however. There's got to be a middle ground, so I asked ChatGPT if there is a way to tax billionaires more, even if it's not quite how the upper middle class are taxed. A likely compromise would come from a policy decision, which isn't likely to be forthcoming anytime soon. President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill only offered more tax breaks to the wealthiest. However, policy proposals that have been floated, include: A minimum tax on billionaires where they might pay around 20% of their overall income Limiting deductions and closing tax loopholes that allow them to significantly reduce taxable income Tax unrealized gains (those assets that have only earned but not yet been sold), gradually. ChatGPT agreed that billionaires could pay more than they currently do, even if they don't pay exactly what upper-middle-class workers pay in percentage terms. 'The key is to design policies that are fair, enforceable, and politically feasible.' I asked how realistic such policy proposals are, and ChatGPT told me what I already knew: They're 'moderately realistic' but only with the 'right political alignment.' More From GOBankingRates 9 Downsizing Tips for the Middle Class To Save on Monthly Expenses This article originally appeared on I Asked ChatGPT What Would Happen If Billionaires Paid Taxes at the Same Rate as the Upper Middle Class Se produjo un error al recuperar la información Inicia sesión para acceder a tu portafolio Se produjo un error al recuperar la información Se produjo un error al recuperar la información Se produjo un error al recuperar la información Se produjo un error al recuperar la información
Yahoo
3 minutes ago
- Yahoo
AT&T Inc. (T) Is Very Good At What It Does, Says Jim Cramer
We recently published . AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) is one of the stocks Jim Cramer recently discussed. AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) has been performing well in 2025. Its shares gained 22.7% year-to-date on the back of multiple factors such as robust subscriber additions. The stock gained 2% after the latest earnings report, which saw AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) add 401,000 wireless subscribers to smash analyst estimates of 295,700 out of the park. The firm's strong performance made Cramer wonder how all three mega American carriers could simultaneously perform well, as logically, someone has to lose share for the others to thrive: 'But David, AT&T, has someone downgraded AT&T? I thought that AT&T was good. But how can AT&T and Verizon and T-Mobile do well? Cramer recently discussed AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T)'s stock in comparison to T-Mobile: 'You know, people like ATT. And I'm not against it. I like ATT, too. But, look what can I say, T-Mobile has been a huge, huge winner. Sievert is a winner. And before that Legere was a winner. But now the stock acts quite badly, and now we know. It's good to know the reason.' While we acknowledge the potential of T as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and have limited downside risk. If you are looking for an extremely cheap AI stock that is also a major beneficiary of Trump tariffs and onshoring, see our free report on the . READ NEXT: 30 Stocks That Should Double in 3 Years and 11 Hidden AI Stocks to Buy Right Now. Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
