T-Mobile Home Internet followup

Mon Oct 31 14:04:54 MST 2022

Yes I know the FCC auctioned off what were tv channels and cell phone 
companies paid for them.   From having lived in rural areas of Arizona 
for much of my life, I can say from experience that the UHF channels 
from Phoenix didn't reach out into rural areas very well.  At one time 
Phoenix had tv stations on 15, 21,33,45, 61 and several other low power 
stations.  My point was that frequencies once used for television are 
now being used for cell phone service, including 5G.

On 10/31/22 12:58, David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss wrote:
> The UHF TV channels were hardly used, mainly for servicing rural 
> areas. Large densely populated areas did not use them. And the FCC 
> tended to allocate the lower-end frequencies first. So not many people 
> got exposed to the upper-band emissions.
>
> None of this airspace was “given away” to anybody. The FCC has public 
> auctions from time to time, and has raised several billion dollars in 
> leases for these licenses. Each license is for a local geographic 
> area; to get similar band frequencies in multiple areas, companies 
> must bid on them individually.
>
> T-Mo bought Sprint in large part b/c of the big swaths of licenses 
> they had been sitting on that complemented T-Mo’s existing 
> infrastructure. And in the most recent auctions, hardly anybody placed 
> any bids, so T-Mo/Sprint captured the lion’s share of the licenses 
> being auctioned at a significant discount.
>
> T-Mo has been rolling out their Home Internet for a few years now. 
> I’ve had it since not long after it launched on 4G and it’s the best 
> service I’ve ever had. But its availability has been restricted until 
> recently. In the zones where they’d offer it, it worked well. But 
> since they opened it up to everybody, there are zones where it does 
> not work well. A friend of  mine just tried it out and it didn’t work 
> for him, so he returned the device the next day. I had the same 
> problem with Sprint’s phone service at one place I lived, and other 
> carriers’ cell service elsewhere.
>
> There are lots of “blind spots” for EVERY carrier where their service 
> doesn’t work. At least T-Mo knows this and they are really great about 
> taking back the equipment and cancelling the service. I once got a 
> cell phone at Costco and Sprint service, and as I said it did not work 
> at my home. That turned into a nightmare b/c while Sprint was happy to 
> cancel the service, the marketing company selling it at Costco refused 
> to take the phones back and refund anything. It wasn’t either Sprint 
> nor Costco, just some jerk-ass vendor who hada  no-return / 
> no-cancellation policy that they weren’t up-front about, and Costco 
> didn’t seem to care at the time.
>
> But I’m very happy with my T-Mo Home Internet, mainly b/c the only 
> other option I’ve got is Cox, and it kept going down when I had it b/c 
> the equipment was old and they kept prioritizing newer areas to 
> upgrade. I have been getting flyers from CenturyLink for years about 
> how they’re installing fiber in the area, but it always stops 1/4 mile 
> away. I guess they just don’t have enough customers in my subdivision 
> to make it worth their while.
>
> The Good News is T-Mo installed a new 5G tower 1000 feet south of me 
> and it beams a signal right into this neighborhood. It’s way stronger 
> than the old 4G signal I was getting from AT&T. It’s always a 
> crap-shoot with these folks.
>
> -David Schwartz
>
>
>
>
>> On Oct 31, 2022, at 11:23 AM, Jim via PLUG-discuss 
>> <plug-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
>>
>> What  the carriers are calling 5G is a portion of the 5G standards 
>> that don't provide the high speed service that the mmwave tech does.  
>> For the last 40 years, the FCC has been handing over to cell phone 
>> companies chunks of spectrum that previously were reserved for over 
>> the air television.  Until some time in the 80s, the top tv channel 
>> was 83.  Then it was reduced to  69 with 70 - 83 given to cell 
>> phones.  Later they did it again with the highest tv channel being 
>> 51. More recently the government again gave channels 38-51 to the 
>> cell phone carriers.  Currently the top tv channel is 36.  37 is 
>> reserved for radio astronomy.
>>
>> I laugh when I read something about these moonbats who go on about 5G 
>> signals being hazardous to human health.  They've been exposed to 
>> those frequencies for decades when they were used for television.
>>
>> My guess is that T Mobile's service went down the crapper because 
>> people signed up for it, they don't have the capacity to handle the 
>> demand customers are placing on the network and either are unable to 
>> correct the problem or unwilling to spend the money to fix it.
>>
>> on 10/30/22 16:11, Michael Butash via PLUG-discuss wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks for the feedback, though that really bites.  Reminds me of 
>>> Sprint wireless broadband circa 2001 using fixed antennas, it was 
>>> great at first, but then only in the middle of the night, as it 
>>> sucked entirely during the day as it couldn't deal with the capacity 
>>> either.
>>>
>>> I'm not surprised, real 5g using mmwave technology is really only 
>>> decent to around 700ft or so, as I've used a few products for fixed 
>>> wireless point to point or multipoint as well.  It's also what 
>>> drives ultrawideband technology used by apple now pervasively, 
>>> marketed as a "personal area network" for short range optimized 
>>> use.  It's simply not *good* as a wan technology.
>>>
>>> That said, carriers use 5G generically whether they're talking real 
>>> mmwave 5G or just some enhanced version of 4G they can't market 
>>> anymore unless they call it 5G too, so who knows what you're really 
>>> using.
>>>
>>> My customer is starting to use 5g in a large local 1100-some store 
>>> retail chain to get off the last remnants of the last of old T1's 
>>> and other crap rural broadband providers as the only choice until 
>>> now, it'll be interesting to see how they fare here and other region 
>>> markets in the long run.
>>>
>>> -mb
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, Oct 30, 2022 at 3:44 PM Daniel Stasinski via PLUG-discuss 
>>> <plug-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>     A while back I gave impressive stats and glowing praise on my
>>>     switch to T-Mobile Home Internet.  It had a few limitations that
>>>     I had to work around, but it was fast.  However, for almost a
>>>     month now it has dropped to just above T1 speed most of the day
>>>     and is pretty much useless.  I'll be switching back to DSL,
>>>     which unfortunately is my only other option where I live.
>>>
>>>     *Daniel P. Stasinski*
>>>     daniel at GenericInbox.com
>>>     ✞ /Jesus Is King /✞
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