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T-Mobile Launches Unlimited 5G Home Internet for $60/Month
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How is this any worse than being connected to the internet via a home router / NAT? The 5G connection probably has its own NAT layer. And if it doesn't, I'd say it's better the rip that bandaid off and stop relying on the false notion that a customer's LAN is secure just by virtue of NAT.
This might be the long-term vision for the future, but I don't see it really causing a drastic move away from wi-fi any time soon. Cell carriers have a lot of limitations because their towers can only handle so much traffic at a time. (Remember, they not only have to handle the total bandwidth of everyone connected to each tower, but have to have enough CPU power to handle constantly doing hand-offs of customers to/from adjacent towers as they move further from one and closer to the next one.)
Your home 5G broadband connection might exist in a static location, but all of the 5G phones, tablets and watches sure won't. Once you add all sorts of new Internet connected things like dog collars, you're just saturating those capabilities even more.
Wi-Fi is going to help people stay mobile, within a given radius of a reliable, fast wired broadband connection.
Your home 5G broadband connection might exist in a static location, but all of the 5G phones, tablets and watches sure won't. Once you add all sorts of new Internet connected things like dog collars, you're just saturating those capabilities even more.
Wi-Fi is going to help people stay mobile, within a given radius of a reliable, fast wired broadband connection.
Internaut
macrumors 65816
EE offers a similar product in the UK. Bit more expensive at £55 per month. It’d quite a bit cheaper than Starlink... Caveat? While being a nice option to have, it seems to me (in more densely populated UK at least) that you’re quite unlikely to live in an area with great 5G and wire services worse enough to justify the cost.
That's what credit card is for. Dispute the charge and you are not liable to pay until the dispute is settled. And as icing on the cake, you get 3% cash reward with Apple Card.
Just use a credit card.
If there's a dispute, credit card companies will almost always wide with the customer.
Or you just autopay with a visa or MasterCard and dispute the charge when they take money erroneously and let the creditor and the theif duke it out.
I think Starlink will be better in the long run despite the costs.
From what I've been reading Starlink is supposed to have 1 GB speeds or higher in the long run.
It's the same T-Mobile cellular service from the same T-Mobile cellular towers in your area.
They give you a 4G/5G gateway for all your computers, tablets, TVs, and other devices to connect to in your home.
But you're still connecting to the same cellular network as you do when you're outside on your phone.
Lol I’m in the middle of LA but my building gets either At&T DSL speed (which is a joke) or Spectrum which offers max 100mb in download, but need someone to come install it, get an appointment and all that jazz. I’ve been using T-Mobile home internet for a couple months and love it. It’s definitely the future (beside fiber).
Internaut
macrumors 65816
Agreed. The words cellular and unlimited have never gone well together when it comes to all you can eat dara.
Lol exactly.
In about 6 months I bet they'll offer a "Truly Unlimited" plan... for $75/mo
🤣
There's a lot of misunderstanding here. This is a broadband home connection. Just as with other types of home internet solutions, you can connect multiple devices by wi-fi (which in this case is built into the device, although it also includes eithernet ports for connection a stand-alone wi-fi device). I have one of these right now through the pilot program and have about 30 devices on it.
This service isn't for people like you.
It's for people who can only get DSL or don't even have broadband service to their homes. (Yes, there are millions of people like that across the U.S.).
$60/mo for unlimited internet with speeds up to 100Mbps is much better than something like 10Mbps AT&T DSL for $45/mo which then goes up to $65/mo after 12 months. Trying working/schooling from home when your AT&T DSL up speed is less than 1Mbps.
It's also better than something like Viasat
I suppose you could always take out a full page ad in the Wall St Journal and complain about how you can't get anything better than 3Mbps AT&T DSL
AT&T customer since 1960 buys WSJ print ad to complain of slow speeds
Open letter to CEO asks why AT&T left DSL areas with shoddy Internet access.
arstechnica.com
Maybe the negative press will get AT&T off their lazy asses and finally deploy the fiber
AT&T scrambles to install fiber for 90-year-old after his viral WSJ ad
From 3Mbps DSL to 300Mbps fiber: Aaron Epstein’s newspaper ad gets amazing result.
arstechnica.com
that the U.S. government paid them to do years ago
AT&T grudgingly accepts $428 million in annual government funding
AT&T objected to 10Mbps requirement, but will expand “broadband” in 18 states.
arstechnica.com
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good god. thanks for spelling it out for me. never ever. i can deal with spotty cell service, but if my home network resembled that in any way — i'd go mad.
1)I think Apple discontinued their Airport because it was overpriced and the market was beyond saturated. No real money to be made by Apple.
2)Although I agree about any cell tower service spreading, the promise of 5G has been yelled at me in commercials for almost 2 years now...and in the USA about 5 cities have it...and out of those cities, the speeds are nothing to write home about. Also, I also don't think the carriers have any real infrastructure in place to properly host millions of people using their towers for data...For several years now, I've attempted to use AT&T's tower when my power and/or ISP drops and the carrier speeds are 1/3 they normally are as hundreds of people start to surf. The towers/infra simply isn't designed to host tons of people doing the daily internet stuff that their $45/month cable company bill offers. It drives me nuts because I pay for this hot spot service and yet it's only of any use when the power and ISP are up. Normal speeds are about 50Mbit down and 15Mbit up I believe which is fine for a backup solution...but when I need to use it as a backup, the speeds are atrocious.
3)WIFI networking isn't going anywhere for a very long time. It's ubiquitous, it's easy to set up and manage (if you need to manage it), it works with any WIFI device, and it offers WIFI to dozens of machines in your house. On a carrier, you're at the mercy of them when you call and complain about your speeds...unlike the cable company, they aren't (and cannot) send someone to your home to check the line or the cablemodem...there's nothing to check. They will likely blame your device or your location and hang up. We have 24 devices using WIFI and 12 more on ethernet in our house.
Believe me, I would love the next great technology of blazing internet speeds. I live in CT and I pay $45/month for 450Mbit down and 20Mbit up and that's the fastest I can get. In reality (and I'm a diehard techie), there's nothing that can max out my downstream unless you count some massive download from the newgroups or torrent or some 5gig download from Microsoft or Adobe or a linux distro. I'm happy to have 450, though. I wish the upstream were quite a bit faster such as 100Mbit but even with that, the only thing our family would max it out with is sending gigs of pictures up to Shutterfly and uploading a video to Youtube and that's probably true for the vast majority of users. The niche users who are pirating (upstream and down) hundreds of gigs a day or uploading 4k content really don't count.
Set up Auto Pay with a credit card. Have an issue and need to dispute charge? Call up your credit card company/issuer and dispute charge.
Don't want them to have your credit card # after you've canceled service? Report card as stolen to get a new card and number.
It's not that complicated.
Exactly...
If you have disappointing T-Mobile service in your area... you'll have disappointing service with this too. It's all using the same cellular network.
I looked closely at the gateway... and it doesn't appear to have a port for an external antenna. I've seen similar devices where you can put a big antenna on your roof to increase range and connectivity.
Though they do call it "Long Range"... so maybe they have some good strong antennas inside the little tube!
Here's a review of it:
An Early Adopter's Hands-On Take on How T-Mobile Home Internet Compares With Cable
It's an affordable 5G-powered alternative to Comcast and others. Here's how it stood up to real-world use.
www.cnet.com
I would imagine this is for people that can't get much more than slow connectivity.