Several years ago I got fed up with over priced cable with poor quality service and found a deal with T-Mobile high speed home internet. At $50 a month and no data caps it was a deal. It worked fine for a few years but others found out about it and it started to slow down to crawl 20Mbps or much less. Even lower definition videos would freeze up. My area had limited choices so the search was on. I’d seen a YouTube video about an antenna upgrade to the T-Mobile Gateway and decided to give it a try. I went with the full kit QuadPro 4X4 MIMO for $399 with the 20’ cable version but select length for your needs. Since I have the older unit, I would have to do surgery because it doesn’t have external ports. The kit came with the little adapters just incase. Warning! Don’t have too much coffee or be needing it. Those connectors are tinny! I made a bracket to hold the connectors so it wouldn’t rip the little cables out. The kit is amazingly well appointed with brackets, hardware and TOOLS! Support is there for you too so fill out the info and you get a text with a map of your house and directions to different towers and they are responsive. Things to know; the closest tower isn’t necessarily the best. You may spend a good part of a day to find and peak a signal. Using antenna, gateway, an extension cord and your WiFi connected phone using a internet speed test to go portable and hunt around your house. The 4X4 is directional! A big difference in signal can be in as little as a foot in location. Rigging the antenna to a step ladder to repeat the test for a while is the way to go and not have the blood run out of your arms. Hight isn’t always the best, you will get a better signal but also possibly interference so the results can be stellar one moment than dismal the next so the house can block the unwanted signals. The tower I’m using is about 4 miles away. As a note, the Gatway is registered to your gps location, more than a few hundred feet from your home and it may stop working unless something’s changed.
New customers to T-Mobile pay $60 a month and have 1.2 Tb data cap where speeds could be reduced till next billing period. How much it’s slowed is ambiguous. But 1.2Tb is equal to streaming 4K 7 hours a day for a month! Verizon has a similar service but I don’t know what their plan is, but you should check if their coverage is better in your area. My results are amazing. Wi-Fi to my phone is faster than the TV’s WiFi but it’s plenty fast to stream 8K. This might be a cheaper option than star link
New customers to T-Mobile pay $60 a month and have 1.2 Tb data cap where speeds could be reduced till next billing period. How much it’s slowed is ambiguous. But 1.2Tb is equal to streaming 4K 7 hours a day for a month! Verizon has a similar service but I don’t know what their plan is, but you should check if their coverage is better in your area. My results are amazing. Wi-Fi to my phone is faster than the TV’s WiFi but it’s plenty fast to stream 8K. This might be a cheaper option than star link
But I will tell my DIYSolar family. How long will this work before this tower slows, who knows. Perhaps some other tech or service will come along in time. The few cable providers know that they have a monopoly and price accordingly and the area is too small to run fiber to be profitable.
I found out the hard way on a holiday weekend and couldn’t use the phone at all. But hey you got to try things to save money and what didn’t work for me could work for you.
