Albuquerque, New Mexico. The home of green chili peppers, 310 days of sunshine, the International Hot Air Balloon Festival and a terribly slow internet connection. Home Internet was a two horse race Albuquerque for years: CenturyLink DSL And Xfinity Cable. I spent decades on DSL, watching my internet speed tests slowly build up to a maximum of 20 megabits per second. Friends at the faster Xfinity bemoaned the cable company’s customer service, data cap and prices, so I stubbornly stuck with CenturyLink. One day at the end of 2022, a T-Mobile Home Internet the gateway arrived at my house. After that I finally called to cancel CenturyLink.

Why I Switched to T-Mobile Home Internet

I decided on T-Mobile for several reasons. DSL was too slow. My next door 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 dancing. If you’re looking for a TL;DR, here you go: I’m still on T-Mobile Home Internet and will probably stick with it until I can give Verizon 5G Home Internet a try or until the fiber finally appears on my block. My experience with 5G home internet is specific to my situation, so your journey with the same service may differ. Here are the things I like about my 5G home internet and the things that might push me to do it. switch to another internet service provider A day.

The positive points of T-Mobile Home Internet

I’ll sing the praises of T-Mobile Home Internet before airing my grievances. The service’s best features are its simplicity and ease of use and it represents an upgrade over outdated DSL.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 $50. This is a sweet spot for me when it comes to home internet rates. I was willing to pay a little more than CenturyLink for a higher level of service, but my bargain-hunting mind would balk at anything higher. I would consider Verizon 5G Home Internet for the same price, but the rival service is not available at my address.

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

It’s faster than DSL

That may seem like low praise, but T-Mobile gives me much better speeds than I was getting with DSL. My best speed tests yielded net download speeds of 200 Mbps, which is 10 times what I got on a good day with DSL. Speeds may be variable due to network congestion and the location of the gateway device. I have a few 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 determine penalties for exceeding a data cap. I definitely don’t want to be linked to a contract. I just want to have internet at home and be free to try another ISP. T-Mobile checks the box for simplicity. There are no equipment fees, data caps or contracts.

It’s mom approved

My mother lives six blocks from me. It also had CenturyLink DSL. I ran a speed test on her desktop computer and the most she could get was around 12 Mbps. This is not a typo. This is 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 signed her up for T-Mobile. She found a nice catwalk perch in a window near her computer. With a strong signal, it can consistently reduce speeds by 100-200 Mbps, which is great for its discrete browsing and streaming needs. The only downside is that she receives text messages about schools closing on her gateway, a holdover from whoever used her gateway’s phone number before her. It’s a small inconvenience and I don’t have the same problem.

The walkways are easy

T-Mobile provides a free gateway device that merges the functionality of a modem and router. I have a silver Nokia Gateway that we affectionately call the “trash can”. The top-mounted screen is slightly awkward due to its inconvenient location, and it’s hot but works. T-Mobile now offers newer models. My mother has a Sagemcom device with a front screen that looks like a fancier trash can. The newer Gateway is sleeker and looks like an Apple product. I had no problem configuring 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 issues to report. Wi-Fi works well, reaching the corners of our vintage homes with respectable speeds.

The Not-So-Good Things About T-Mobile Home Internet

T-Mobile Home Internet has a lot going for it, but it’s not the broadband service of my dreams. Here are some areas where it stumbles.

It’s not faster than cable or fiber

Xfinity offers cable speeds of up to 1,200 Mbps to my home. Vexus Fiber, Quantum fiber and Ezee Fiber is slowly spreading to Albuquerque, but it’s not in my historic district yet. Fiber customers can access symmetrical concert speeds, which I’m extremely envious of. T-Mobile Home Internet offers typical speeds of 72 to 245 Mbps, much lower than local cable and fiber ISP offerings. The good news is that I’m not a gamer (let’s ignore my obsession with the Nintendo Wii), so I just need enough oomph to surf and stream. I wouldn’t mind more zippy 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 you encounter with phone service. Sometimes you find yourself in a place with weak signal. Sometimes that place is your own home. My neighbor, the first person I know to adopt 5G home internet, gets a strong signal on the west side of her house. Next to that, the best I can get is a fair signal, which is equivalent to two bars out of five on the bridge scale. This means I’m not taking advantage of the maximum speeds the service is capable of.

Speeds can vary wildly

The speed of my T-Mobile Home Internet connection is comparable to the weather in Albuquerque. Wait five minutes and it will change. I just did an internet speed test and got 16.7 Mbps. It’s slow enough to give me unwanted flashbacks to my DSL days. A few minutes later I’m at 94.6Mbps. Sometimes I get over 100 Mbps. Usually I hover around 80 Mbps. My speed tests are all over the map. This may be due in part to the construction materials in my 1939 house and my inability to find a good location for the gateway to get a better signal. My CNET colleague Eli Blumenthal also encountered speed issues while testing the service in 2022..

Window placement is tricky

T-Mobile recommended place your gateway “near a window or high up on an upper floor or shelf.” When I had DSL, my router sat in my home office on a nice little custom shelf. It was discreet and out of the way. My T-Mobile gateway visited every window in my house in my search for a strong signal. It now sits in my living room with the silver “trash can” perched on a windowsill. I still have solid Wi-Fi coverage around my house, but Internet equipment sitting outside my window is not my ideal decoration.

Final Thoughts on My T-Mobile Home Internet Experience

Are you considering getting into T-Mobile Home Internet? Determine if this is an upgrade from your current service. If you’re exploring with DSL, this might be a smart move. If you need consistent, super-fast speeds, especially for gaming, look to cable or fiber. I’m not a T-Mobile phone customer, but mobile users can take advantage of qualifying phone plans for additional savings on home internet. That could be enough to entice price-conscious buyers to switch 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 relationship than DSL.