5G It’s been around for quite some time, but it still has some issues 5G Home Internet ServiceTo be honest, I’m still confused at times. One of the most common questions I get is, “I have 5G on my phone when I’m at home, but my provider says I don’t have 5G home internet service. What does that mean?”
I encountered this myself when I changed careers. AT&T To T-Mobile And I was immediately impressed with the 5G performance of my phone. But even though I had T-Mobile 5G cellular service at home, my address was T-Mobile Home InternetMy immediate reaction was “Huh?”
T-Mobile is not alone. VerizonThe company’s 5G home internet products are not available in every address covered in its 5G coverage map. Even Verizon’s Ultra Wideband If there is a service in your area, I don’t know if you can apply. Verizon 5G Home Internet.
Wait, T-Mobile and Verizon are offering 5G home internet?
yes. T-Mobile and Verizon They use cellular signals to offer dedicated 5G home internet plans, and each provider’s plan features simple, all-inclusive pricing without equipment fees, data caps, term contracts and other hassles common with internet service providers.
T-Mobile Home Internet has one plan available for $60 per month ($40 for eligible Magenta Max customers). Verizon offers two plans: Verizon 5G Home ($50 per month) and Verizon 5G Home Plus ($70 per month), and both plans are discounted by $15-25 with eligible Verizon mobile plans. Simplicity and a straightforward approach seem to be the key for both companies.
An AT&T spokesperson told CNET that “fiber optics remains our focus,” but the company also offers 5G home internet service. AT&T Internet AirThe service potentially offers higher download speeds than hybrid DSL services (up to 100 Mbps, up from up to 225 megabits per second with AT&T Internet) and is currently available in 95 locations across the United States.
Will home internet become a side business for mobile phone companies?
One might think that getting into the ISP business is just a little treat for these companies, but Jeff Moore, president of Wave7 Research and an expert on the telecommunications industry, believes there’s more to it than that.
“Mobile is T-Mobile’s core business and it’s a big part of Verizon’s core business,” Moore said. “But T-Mobile in particular has been telling Wall Street that in addition to sales, it’s [home internet] The company says it is expanding its business services and reach into rural America. I don’t think this is just a PR stunt.”
T-Mobile, which offers the gateway device shown here, includes the equipment in the monthly fee.
All the numbers back up Moore’s assessment: In its Q1 2024 report, T-Mobile proudly announced that it had surpassed 5 million customers, a pretty impressive figure for a company that achieved this just two years after launching its product nationwide.
Overall, T-Mobile has been aggressive in its marketing. In May 2022, the company Internet Freedom When you push it in, Americans’ frustration with ISPs And it encourages people to “break away from the big internet” by trying out T-Mobile Home Internet. To entice customers, the company is offering a 15-day free trial period (you can try it without changing your current provider) and an additional $20 off per month on eligible Magenta Max mobile plans.
Verizon has also made ambitious proposals, but the impression that “ISPs are evil” is fading. This is probably because Verizon Fios Verizon, the company’s fiber optic internet service, is an ISP and one of the few that consistently gets high ratings. In the company’s case, 5G home internet seems less like a blow to “Big Internet” and more like a strategy to expand Verizon’s home internet business beyond the Northeast (where Verizon Fios is based) to other parts of the country.
If T-Mobile and Verizon are serious about home internet, why isn’t there more overall 5G coverage available?
My colleague Eli Blumenthal tests Verizon 5G Homehe I got it. The iPhone’s 5G connection was better than the 5G Home Hub.
He had noticed something.
A Verizon spokesperson said the company’s network is designed with mobile customers in mind. “We continue to allocate spectrum to ensure the reliability our mobile customers expect from Verizon,” the company said in an email. “Deploying more spectrum beyond what our modeling indicates is needed for the best reliability for our mobile customers will also enable us to deliver 5G home services.”
Verizon will also include 5G equipment in the monthly fee.
5G will enable a higher connection density (about 1 million devices per square kilometer) than previous generations of cellular connections. Is that a lot? Yes, about 100x better than 4GBut it’s not unlimited, and Moore believes T-Mobile is also being careful about how it sells home internet, because home internet products eat up a lot of mobile network capacity.
He pointed me to a YouTube interview with Kendra Lord, director of geospatial engineering and analytics at T-Mobile, in which she likened 5G home internet availability to the number of seats on an airplane.
“We’re not just looking to increase the number of households. [T-Mobile Home Internet]”But it’s a question of how many you can say yes to within a particular field,” she said.
I reached out to T-Mobile for more details, and a spokesperson backed up that notion: “There are still many households that don’t qualify for home internet even if they have 5G available on their mobile devices. This is by design,” I was told in an email.
“Our fixed wireless home internet Extra Wireless networks have limited capacity. Some areas have network capacity, others don’t. That’s why we allocate home Internet access per sector, per home.”
This means that it’s entirely possible that I have 5G cellular service in my home, and that my neighbors may have T-Mobile Home Internet, but my address may not be eligible for that home internet product due to bandwidth limitations in my area’s cellular coverage.
The next time you find yourself wondering, “Why don’t I get 5G home internet when my home phone is 5G capable?”, you might want to wait a little longer. Both carriers are actively optimizing their networks to put mobile first, home internet second, in a dynamic process that changes month by month. 2024 could be the year you try 5G for your home broadband connection.
