I’m shopping my home internet service. Currently, I have AT&T wireline service. The only wireline alternative in my neighborhood is Comcast. 
Has anyone here tried either T-Mobile’s or Verizon’s fixed wireless home Internet? If so, what do you think?
I live in a fringe area of both T-Mobile and Verizon, so have to rely on AT&T’s Fiber, else I would try this,
I would use an app like Phone Signal Infomation
You can track over a longer period to see how the relative signal strength and handovers to adjacent cells compare. Here is a 1-hour screenshot of my results.
ETA: I just pushed an article on this subject to the RW Users Flipboard view
@rolandh said:
Has anyone here tried either T-Mobile’s or Verizon’s fixed wireless home Internet? If so, what do you think?
For years I had DSL. Twenty + years ago it was with Verizon, which sold its lines here in rural Vermont to FairPoint, which sold its lines to Consolidated Communications. The plan with the fastest speed in my area was 25 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up. The cost lately was just over $61/mo.
In December I signed up with TMO Home Internet. They sent me the Arcadyan KVD21 gateway. After 2 weeks of trying it, I discontinued my C.C.I. DSL because I had no issues with TMO HI. I get speeds that average 50 Mbps down and 25 up. My cost is $50/mo.
I have not had any issues with my internet service. I have an average of 20 devices on the network. From what I read in the TMO Community forum many users are unhappy with the service. I think it’s mostly complaints that the service is inadequate with gaming and security cameras. I agree the latency can be terrible, but there are no gamers in my household, nor do we have security cameras.
Nater Tater on YouTube has lots of videos about TMO HI - everything you ever wanted to know about TMO HI https://www.youtube.com/c/natertater
I have Spectrum cable internet and have not tried Verizon or T-Mobile Wireless Home Internet. However, I have a friend who has Comcast cable internet and is quite happy with it. He pays $51 a month. That is only a dollar more than what T-Mobile charges (assuming there is no tax with T-Mobile). If the price were the same, I would go with the wired internet because wired is usually better.
I’ve had the Verizon LTE Home for the past 4 months with no issues. $50/month with auto-pay. tax included, guaranteed price for 10 years. It covers our 3-bedroom single-floor ranch-style home with a full basement without issue. I have no other Verizon products or services, am still with Republic (no issues). I was previously using Spectrum, but got fed up with the price increase to $79/month. I can stream content through my Amazon Fire Stick at 1080p.
@dbrew826 said:
I was previously using Spectrum, but got fed up with the price increase to $79/month.
I live in a Spectrum service area too. When it was Time Warner, they offered “Everyday low-priced internet” for $15 per month. Spectrum doubled the price over the past nine years, but luckily it started out low. 
@dbrew826 said:
I’ve had the Verizon LTE Home for the past 4 months with no issues. $50/month with auto-pay. tax included, guaranteed price for 10 years. It covers our 3-bedroom single-floor ranch-style home with a full basement without issue.
I was hoping to hear from someone using Verizon’s offering. Do you know if the Verizon provided router can be bridged to one’s own equipment?
@a_j said:
If the price were the same, I would go with the wired internet because wired is usually better.
Generally, I agree all other things being equal wireline Internet is superior to wireless. Before switching to AT&T Wireline, I had Comcast. It wasn’t a great experience for me. Comcast is an amalgamation of smaller companies acquired over the years. If the infrastructure built by a smaller company later acquired by Comcast in a given area is good, usually things just work and there’s no need to contact Comcast’s award winning support. Yes, that’s sarcasm. If, on the other hand, the infrastructure is not so good, then one tends to need to work with Comcast support and, well, ugh is all I have to say for that. When I was in NH, I used Comcast with no complaints. Now, in South Florida, Comcast’s infrastructure is buried underground and there is a very high water table. Likewise, AT&T’s wireline infrastructure is underground but for whatever reason, where I found myself contacting Comcast support 5-6 times a year, I’ve literally never needed to contact AT&T for wireline support.
@henry51 said:
In December I signed up with TMO Home Internet. They sent me the Arcadyan KVD21 gateway. After 2 weeks of trying it, I discontinued my C.C.I. DSL because I had no issues with TMO HI. I get speeds that average 50 Mbps down and 25 up. My cost is $50/mo.I have not had any issues with my internet service. I have an average of 20 devices on the network. From what I read in the TMO Community forum many users are unhappy with the service. I think it’s mostly complaints that the service is inadequate with gaming and security cameras. I agree the latency can be terrible, but there are no gamers in my household, nor do we have security cameras.
Nater Tater on YouTube has lots of videos about TMO HI - everything you ever wanted to know about TMO HI https://www.youtube.com/c/natertater
I’ve also seen complaints TMO’s Home Internet plays poorly with OTT VoIP. Since I’m among those who have repurposed their Extend Home adapter, that’s a concern. Thanks for the YouTube link, I’ll check it out!
@rolandh said:
Before switching to AT&T Wireline, I had Comcast. It wasn’t a great experience for me.
@a_j said:
I had AT&T DSL internet in the late 2000s and the customer service was not good. I think I would put AT&T last on the list of companies I would want to deal with in the future. However, I do like their cell coverage through Boost.
It’s Comcast rather than AT&T that was a two-time winner of Consumerist’s Golden Poo award for being the worst company in America with which to do business.
We each have our own experiences and my experience with Comcast is enough to make me not want to go back. Regarding AT&T’s customer service; it may very well be as bad as you describe it, however, I’ve never needed to use AT&T’s customer service. That’s because, unlike Comcast’s service in my area, AT&T’s wireline Internet just works for me. I’m entertaining alternatives due to increasing cost not quality of service.
Cell coverage is all about location. In my area, Verizon has the best overall coverage and T-Mobile the most robust network performance. AT&T, while adequate enough, lags in both categories. I’m happy for you Boost’s AT&T coverage is working well. Unless, however, one is suggesting Boost for fixed wireless Internet, I don’t believe it’s germane to this topic.
I have a brother in-law that used Verizon Wireless Home his home internet, but this was probably 4 years ago. They kept running into overage and speed issues. He lives in an area not well served and has tried everything from WildBlue satellite, Frontier DSL, various wireless providers, and now has Starlink. While Starlink appears to be the best of the bunch, he still runs into occasional connectivity issues.
I now have fiber available to my house, but haven’t pulled the trigger on signing up. The company supplying it had a two week outage a couple years ago so I’m not totally convinced of their competence. Xfinity/Comcast supplies 0.5Gig download speeds in my market, but it’s certainly not cheap. I continue to get service from them because it’s been reliable and I can still use my own equipment. Of course I could get a better deal on price with a contract, but I’m not interested in that.
We use T-Mobile internet in a shop I work at. It’s in a downtown area with great 5G signal. Download speeds average 300Mbps. If your 5G signal is solid, I recommend giving it a shot.
I am also thinking of trying T-Mobile Home internet. I’m in Virginia and currently using Comcast. There are no issues with the internet service but this month my bill is changing from $45 to $65 because my promotion is ending. They will give me a new offer for $40? If I have the payment automatically deducted from my checking account. This offer is good for one year and they told next year I can call in and ask for a new offer when the bill will go up to whatever the offers regular amount is. I am just tired of doing this every 1-3 years. Supposedly the T-Mobile is $50 for life. I know my next door neighbor has the T-Mobile service because it comes up as an available Wi-Fi network if I am at that end of my house but I haven’t had the opportunity to ask them about it yet. I have used Verizon DSL before but as soon as I moved my phone number the internet service stopped. I have also used DSL Extreme out of California which uses att or Verizon telephone lines as a stand alone dsl provider. It worked the same as the Verizon dsl I had and used the same modem. I switched for a better offer from Comcast with s tv package but now I like You Tube Tv better and can have six people on the account and watch at three different locations at the same time. So my long story is that I’m following this and very close to getting the T-Mobile equipment and service.
I was hoping to hear from someone using Verizon’s offering. Do you know if the Verizon provided router can be bridged to one’s own equipment?
Any equipment connected to this Verizon “cube” is via Wi-Fi. For instance, there was no way for me to use my wireless router with this. There are no external ports to plug things into that I can see. Verizon makes mention of Wi-Fi “extenders” they can provide. However I didn’t need this option for complete coverage in our home.
Since there was a one month free trial period, I checked it out before canceling Spectrum. Again, this is an LTE device, not 5G (unavailable in my area). So not blazing fast for super high resolution video. However, 1080p works fine.
I can post photos if there is interest.
@rolandh said:
I’ve also seen complaints TMO’s Home Internet plays poorly with OTT VoIP. Since I’m among those who have repurposed their Extend Home adapter, that’s a concern.
My repurposed Home Extend adapter (with a Callcentric number) is working fine with my T-Mobile 5G Home Internet. I haven’t had any issues with it in the 2-1/2 months I’ve had TMO HI. I actually want to thank you for bringing Calcentric to my attention in the RW Community forum.
I just heard on the internet last night that the FCC will allow Spectrum to impose data caps on their cable internet service starting in May 2023. This is especially bad news for those who like to watch shows in 4K. The T-Mobile home internet service does not have data caps, so this is a timely topic, and fixed wireless may be something I will need to consider getting later this spring. Although, I would be disappointed that I could not use my relatively new Asus router any longer.
It appears that you should be able to connect your existing network router to the T-Mobile Gateway.
See this article they publish https://www.t-mobile.com/support/home-internet/connect. It includes a section on 3rd party routers
@jBen said:
It appears that you should be able to connect your existing network router to the T-Mobile Gateway.
See this article they publish https://www.t-mobile.com/support/home-internet/connect. It includes a section on 3rd party routers
Thank you very much! I just may be one step closer to getting fixed wireless. It will be interesting to find out if Spectrum will offer an “unlimited” tier for an extra charge, or if they will just keep charging more for each additional data unit. If it is the latter, I am most likely through with Spectrum.
I found a recent review of T-Mobile Home Internet: T-Mobile Home Internet Review - CNET
I’m surprised that I don’t seem to be in a coverage area for fixed wireless home service for Verizon or T-Mobile. I live in a ~30 square mile ~70K person city, I figured we’d be dense and covered enough.
I currently have cable, 200mbp/s, 1.5 TB cap, $30 a month. So it would be hard to be on pricing. Verizon has a $25 plan, but only as an add-on, so I’m out of luck there.
Speaking of surprises, I was at a large mall area near and got all bars on 5G with my Verizon iPhone, but when I attempted to run Speedtes.net it errored out so I have no idea what speeds it may have provided
We have used T-Mobile Home Internet (TMHI) for two years now with satisfaction. Enabled us to drop the only other real alternative which was the local monopoly cable company with rates at least as high as Comcast, and regular price increases. Very satisfying to say bye-bye to them.
Our house is less than a half mile from a (low) tower with T-Mobile (and AT&T) on it. When starting early in 2021 the bandwidth was limited, but after a few months the tower was upgraded and speed tests since then regularly show 300 down, 50+ up. Completely satisfactory for our home requirements. Have had the same Nokia “trash can” Gateway (or modem) from the beginning, the software and phone app have improved over time.
Last summer AT&T had contractors tear up lawns in our neighborhood to drag fiber underground, so now AT&T Fiber is available to our house for a few dollars a month more than our $50 (flat, no taxes, with auto-pay) TMHI Unlimited (note there is a data capped TMHI version at some locations!). The AT&T Fiber “no increase at 12 moths” promise is not as convincing as T-Mobile’s, but I might give AT&T Fiber a shot. No strong motivation, given our fine experience so far with TMHI.
I contacted Verizon to ask about Fixed Wireless Internet through them, and got confirmation that it is NOT available in my neighborhood. Not completely surprising given complaints by some neighbors that their Verizon mobile phones have problems with calls when inside their houses, or when passing through certain dead zones. Looking at Cellmapper.net confirms that Verizon isn’t really trying very hard to cover our area.
(Interesting (to me) aside: The local monopoly cable company (Buckeye Broadband) is installing its own fiber in the area now, will be interesting to see if there is finally real competition for broadband service around here. Some rumors even have it that Buckeye Broadband fiber might be brought by our house where AT&T just put down fiber. Will be watching!)
