T-Mobile 5G Home Internet Review: Getting Online In An Outage

Internet access is no longer a luxury, but an essential, yet like with many utilities, we're often at the mercy of a single provider. T-Mobile 5G Home Internet aims to change that, and — like with all its offerings — the magenta-themed carrier is vocal about just how liberating cutting your cable or DSL connection could be. My question when I signed up, though, was whether 5G could cover the gaps when nature takes an icy hammer to your traditional ISP.

Just how much T-Mobile's 5G Home Internet will cost each month depends on a few different factors. On paper, it's $50 per month with no setup fee, or $600 each year, including taxes. That gets you unlimited data, though the carrier reserves the right to throttle connections depending on service status or limit them altogether if you're trying to do peer-to-peer or constant streaming.

However, many people won't have to pay anything close to that amount. Existing subscribers with at least one T-Mobile Magenta MAX line (currently $85/mo) can get 5G Home Internet service too, for $30/mo extra. It's worth noting that a 5G mobile hotspot is also included on that Magenta MAX line, though with a 40GB data cap. I took advantage, meanwhile, of a $25/month promotion. I still had to add the 5G Home Internet service to an existing Magenta MAX subscription — I was already a customer — but it's adding just $300 per year to my overall charges (with bill credits taking care of the 50% reduction). Regardless of price, there's no minimum contract: you can cancel at any point and return the hardware.

Finding the best position is where things get trickier. With a traditional cable or DSL modem the decision is made for you, depending on where the line comes into the home. When you're using a 5G mobile network, though, location matters.

The front display shows a five-bar signal strength meter — and, annoyingly tiny, whether you're on a 4G or 5G connection — while the app promises to help find the best location. T-Mobile recommends positioning the modem as high as possible, away from possible sources of interference like cordless phones and microwaves. Really, though, you'll get the most success moving it around, plugging it in, waiting for it to connect, and then running a speed test with your phone or laptop.

Since there's no onboard battery, and the modem has to boot up each time you plug it in, that's a time-consuming process. I looked up where my nearest T-Mobile cell tower was, to get a head-start on location, but it still took trial and error to get the meter to change from "weak" to "good" on the modem's screen. Figure on it being out in the open, too, for the best results, which is a shame if you were hoping to hide it for aesthetic reasons.

T-Mobile is keen to get cable and DSL subscribers to switch over entirely: it even offers to pay off cancellation fees incurred in ending your contract, just as it has done for smartphone plan switchers. My primary interest, though, was in how it could be used as a backup connection. Outages — for power or cable, or both — aren't uncommon where I live, and with two people working from home, it's particularly important to stay online as much as possible.

The reality of that plan has been mixed success. T-Mobile's modem is surprisingly frugal: plugged into a Gear Zero portable battery, it typically consumes 6-14W. That's markedly less than the Xfinity modem which Comcast supplies, and while it might not be something you care too much about when the electricity is free-flowing, you become a lot more aware of it when you're watching a battery meter drop.

The flip side is that you're still dependent on T-Mobile's network, and when everyone in the area is trying to tether — whether with a phone or a standalone modem — the experience dips dramatically. At times the connection was speedy, but equally often it would be sluggish to nonexistent. There's little in the way of information given as to network performance, either, beyond that signal strength meter.

T-Mobile is intentionally limiting the availability of 5G Home Internet service — in part to deal with issues like this. If too many people in your area have already signed up, you might not be able to. The carrier also falls short of committing to specific speeds or indeed guaranteeing service at all. Don't think, either, of throwing it in your car and venturing out to find a better connection. T-Mobile has location limits on service: you can't, for example, take the modem with you between your primary residence and holiday home.

To be fair, T-Mobile doesn't bill 5G Home Internet as a way to weather your broadband-addicted way through traditional outages. All the same, I doubt I'm the only one for whom part of the service's appeal is the thought of getting online when traditional connectivity is struggling. My experience in a roughly four-day power and cable outage suggests your mileage there may vary.

When it worked, T-Mobile's service felt a whole lot like my regular Xfinity connection. Plenty of bandwidth, rock-solid voice and video calls, and streaming Netflix and other services. Problem was, those times were punctuated by sluggish or non-existent data, and there was little in the way of insight through either the modem's display or T-Mobile's companion app to see what might be causing that.

Despite that, and while it may seem excessive to be paying for two ISPs, I'll be keeping T-Mobile's modem alongside my Comcast one. At $25/mo, it feels like a solid backup option; I'd probably feel differently if I was paying twice that amount, mind. Nonetheless, on a megabits-per-dollar basis, it's considerably cheaper than my Xfinity service. Those who have even slower options from traditional cable and DSL providers may find plenty to like here, as what was once typically a monopoly is finally cracked open by 5G.