T-Mobile Home Internet: Can a Mobile Company Meet Your Home's Broadband Needs?

Looking to ditch your current internet service provider? Find out more about this 5G fixed wireless alternative.

See full bioApril 26, 2022 8:04 a.m. PT

Things moved fast in 2021 for T-Mobile's 5G home internet service. It started rolling out as a pilot program early last year and one of my (now former) CNET colleagues, Rick Broida, was one of the first to give it a test run. By April of 2021, T-Mobile announced it had expanded its home broadband service nationwide. Now, a short year later, it's announcing it has expanded its availability out to 40 million households.

We've been aware of T-Mobile's desire to use 5G to break into the home internet game for quite some time. But now that the company's home broadband offering is getting established, what does that mean for you? Does 5G home internetoffer something new? Is T-Mobile Home Internet a viable option to replace your current internet service provider? 

First of all, the price is right: T-Mobile charges $50 a month. On top of that, you don't have to worry about long-term contracts or data caps. Pretty sweet, right?

Definitely, but it's still early days: although T-Mobile Home Internet is currently available to approximately 40 million homes across the US, many locations and addresses still can't get it yet. Plus, while 5G is the marquee player on this bill, T-Mobile relies on 4G LTE to help expand its home internet service area. So, of the 5G home internet providers currently out there, T-Mobile will offer the slowest speeds on average. But let's dig into the details.

T-Mobile's Wi-Fi Gateway modem-router.

T-Mobile

Where can you get T-Mobile Home Internet?

Whenever we start talking about any ISP, it's always good to begin by answering the fundamental question: Can I get this service? T-Mobile Home Internet is currently available to over 40 million households in over 40 different states. That makes it the most widely available 5G home internet service. By comparison, Verizon's 5G Home Internet service has rolled out in approximately 900 marketsbut is available to just shy of 30 million homes at present. In the meantime, T-Mobile is open to signups in over 600 cities, but more households, many within rural areas. To explore a complete list of the available cities and towns, refer to this T-Mobile Home Internet PDF. 

When will T-Mobile Home Internet get to my area?

As I mentioned, T-Mobile is the most widely available 5G home internet service, covering 40 million households. But when you consider that US Census dataputs the total number of households in the country at over 120 million, there's still about 67% of households ineligible for T-Mobile Home Internet. 

A T-Mobile spokesperson didn't have specific details on expansion plans but highlighted that more than 10 million households in the current footprint are within rural America. Additionally, there's a focus on expanding access for small towns and communities. For those outside the current availability window, T-Mobile's site mentions that expansion could take six months or more and allows interested parties to put their name on the list for down the road.

What plans and pricing does T-Mobile Home Internet offer?

Simplicity is one of the biggest things that jumped out at me when I began to explore T-Mobile Home Internet. There isn't an array of tiers and options from which to choose. There's one plan and one plan only. Here's the overview:

T-Mobile Home Internet plans and pricing

Plan	Max speeds	Monthly price	Equipment fee	Data cap	Contract
T-Mobile Home Internet	35-115Mbps download, 6-23Mbps upload	$50	None	None	None

One size fits all

There aren't many qualifiers when discussing T-Mobile Home Internet plans. It's one plan, one price and no additional fees. The premise of 5G home internet is that, unlike typical internet connection types -- including coaxial cable lines, fiber-optic internet and digital subscriber line -- you're not reliant on underground constructions and deployments to get you connected. Instead, it's a fixed wireless service where you get a router that connects to a cellular signal.

T-Mobile provides its Wi-Fi Gateway device, a combination modem and Wi-Fi 6 router compatible with T-Mobile's 4G LTE and 5G networks. As you can see from the chart, the only variable is the average download and upload speed you'll experience. T-Mobile says that all eligible households will see average download speeds of 35 megabits per second at the bare minimum. Depending on your location and the placement of the T-Mobile Gateway, you might see download speeds as high as 115Mbps or more.

Enlarge Image

Currently, T-Mobile utilizes more of its 4G LTE network to expand its availability, so don't expect full 5G capabilities.

T-Mobile

T-Mobile Home Internet speeds: Isn't 5G supposed to be faster?

The hope and promise of 5G and its capabilities have not yet been fully realized. My colleague Eli Blumenthal has wonderfully detailed the basics of 5G and how not all "5G" is the same. In summary: Faster 5G speeds come with shorter ranges. The farther the distance, the less speed on the top end.

For T-Mobile to hit the road running with availability to over 30 million households, it needed to lean on its 4G LTE network and its growing 5G network. That's why my CNET colleagues averaged just over 40Mbps download speeds with T-Mobile Home Internet, and some households may get up to just over 100Mbps. Anecdotally, we've heard of some users seeing download speeds as high as 300Mbps. Still, T-Mobile's FAQ section promises that "customers will see average download speeds in excess of 100Mbps." So, that may be plenty of speed for many, but don't expect the higher download speeds you might get with fiber internet or some cable plans. At least not yet.

On the plus side, T-Mobile Home Internet offers no hidden fees

One of the significant wins for T-Mobile Home Internet is its straightforwardness. There's no pesky small print. ISPs are notorious for their hidden fees and trap pricing that tries to lure you in with enticing promo prices but then sticks you with a larger bill after those terms expire. That's not the case here.

T-Mobile Home Internet features no data caps, so you don't have to fear data overage fees. There's no equipment fee for the Gateway device, so you don't have to figure out an additional monthly cost to tack on to your regular bill. It also requires no annual service contracts, so you don't have any early termination fees looming over your head. These are all appealing aspects of this service and make it very enticing to give T-Mobile Home Internet a try if it's available in your area.

Does T-Mobile offer any deals or promotions for 5G home internet?

In addition to the above consumer-friendly approaches, T-Mobile is also trying to sweeten the pot for potential customers. Currently, T-Mobile is offering new customers a yearlong Paramount Plus subscription for free -- that's a $60 value. It's also giving new customers a chance to subscribe to YouTube TV for $55 a month, which is a $10 discount off the regular price.

How does T-Mobile Home Internet fare against competitors?

As I said, T-Mobile is ahead of its 5G home internet competitors -- Verizon and Starry -- in terms of availability. Starry is currently available in six major metropolitan areas and plans to expand to nearly 30 million households by the end of 2022 by targeting the cities of Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Indianapolis, Memphis, Miami, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, San Francisco and Seattle. Verizon is available in more cities than T-Mobile -- currently 900 -- but still behind T-Mobile's total households covered.

However, Starry and Verizon have the upper hand on average download speeds. Starry customers will typically see consistent download speeds of 200Mbps and Verizon's 5G Home Internet plans average around 300Mbps. What Starry and Verizon have given up in terms of widespread availability, they currently make up for in the average speeds they deliver.

All three 5G home internet providers share freedom from all the hidden fees and pricing games that many cable and fiber ISPs play. With 5G, the monthly rate is the monthly rate. There are no added fees, equipment rental charges, data caps or binding annual contracts.

So, how good is T-Mobile Home Internet, really?

When it comes to 5G, we're much closer to the beginning than the end of where everything will shake out. If it's speed you're after, T-Mobile's 5G home internet service might not impress you if you have other cable and fiber internet providers available at your address. But if you're in a rural area or less developed area where DSL or satellite was your only previous option, T-Mobile will feel lightning fast by comparison.

Overall, T-Mobile has positioned itself as a viable option in the home internet space and made it an intriguing player to watch as it expands its 5G infrastructure. If nothing else, since it demands no contract commitment, it's an opportunity to try a different option and maybe even use it as leverage to negotiate with your current internet service provider. Hopefully, the more options we have as consumers, the better our internet service will be in the long run.

T-Mobile Home Internet FAQs

Are there data caps with T-Mobile Home Internet?

No. T-Mobile Home Internet features unlimited data. Customers will not have any potential data overage fees or charges hanging over their heads. That said, T-Mobile Home Internet customers could find their service slowed in cases where the company prioritizes its mobile users over its fixed wireless customers.

Does T-Mobile Home Internet come with a router?

Yes. One of the appealing aspects of T-Mobile Home Internet is that its monthly fee -- $50 a month if you use AutoPay -- includes a 5G Gateway (a modem/router combo device). The T-Mobile equipment lease is included in the one fee, and all that's required is that you return the device when you end service with T-Mobile.

Is T-Mobile Home Internet faster than satellite internet?

For the most part, yes, but not unequivocally. As T-Mobile says in its Open Internet policy, "many factors affect the speed and performance that customers experience, including… proximity to a cell site, weather and the surrounding terrain," so your download speeds, which average between 35-115Mbps, are not guaranteed. But customers should see download speeds higher than those typically achieved by HughesNet (average of 25Mbps) and Viasat (12-100Mbps). Starlink's base plan boasts a higher range (50-250Mbps) but is not as widely available as T-Mobile Home Internet. It's also much more expensive -- $99 a month, plus a one-time equipment fee of $599.“

NEXT-LEVEL iPad Workflows & Apps (LIFE CHANGING!!!)

Sony WH-1000XM5 Review: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back!

Sony’s best headphones just got [a little] better 🎧

Canon R5 C Review: Canon at Their BEST!

This New ChromeOS Screencast Feature is AMAZING!

The Milky Way’s Black Hole Comes to Light - The New York Times

The Milky Way’s Black Hole Comes to Light

"The Event Horizon Telescope has once again caught sight of the “unseeable.”

May 12, 2022Updated 11:47 a.m. ET

The first direct image of Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way.Event Horizon Collaboration/National Science Foundation

Sign up for Science Times  Get stories that capture the wonders of nature, the cosmos and the human body.

Astronomers announced on Thursday that they had pierced the veil of darkness and dust at the center of our Milky Way galaxy to capture the first picture of “the gentle giant” dwelling there: a supermassive black hole, a trapdoor in space-time through which the equivalent of four million suns have been dispatched to eternity, leaving behind only their gravity and violently bent space-time.

The image, released in six simultaneous news conferences in Washington, and around the globe, showed a lumpy doughnut of radio emission framing empty space. Oohs and aahs broke out at the National Press Club in Washington when Feryal Ozel of the University of Arizona displayed what she called “the first direct image of the gentle giant in the center of our galaxy.” She added: “It seems that black holes like doughnuts.”

Dr. Ozel is part of the Event Horizon Telescope project, a collaboration of more than 300 scientists from 13 institutions that operates an ever-growing global network of telescopes to compose one large telescope as big as Earth.

The team’s results are being published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The new image joins the first ever picture of a black hole, in the galaxy Messier 87, or M87, which the same team of researchers produced in 2019. “We have seen what we thought was ‘unseeable,’” Sheperd Doeleman, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said at the time.

The similarity in the pictures demonstrated that the 2019 image was not a coincidence, Dr. Ozel said.

Moreover, the features of the radio doughnut matched perfectly with predictions derived from the motions of stars and gas clouds around the galactic center. “This is an extraordinary verification of Einstein’s general theory of relativity,” said Michael Johnson, a team member and also of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center.

Einstein’s bad dream

Andrea Ghez of the University of California, Los Angeles.Alex Welsh for The New York Times

Reinhard Genzel of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics.Ksenia Kuleshova for The New York Times

Black holes were an unwelcome consequence of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which attributed gravity to the warping of space and time by matter and energy, much as how a mattress sags under a sleeper.

Einstein’s insight led to a new conception of the cosmos, in which space-time could quiver, bend, rip, expand, swirl and even disappear forever into the maw of a black hole, an entity with gravity so strong that not even light could escape it.

Einstein disapproved of this idea, but the universe is now known to be speckled with black holes. Many are the remains of dead stars that collapsed inward on themselves and just kept going.

But there seems to be a black hole at the center of nearly every galaxy, ours included, that can be millions or billions of times as massive as our sun. Astronomers still do not understand how these supermassive black holes have grown so big.

Paradoxically, despite their ability to swallow light, black holes are the most luminous objects in the universe. Materials — gas, dust, shredded stars — that fall into a black hole are heated to millions of degrees in a dense maelstrom of electromagnetic fields. Most of that matter falls into the black hole, but some is squirted out by enormous pressures and magnetic fields.

The Event Horizon Telescope team scored its first triumph in April 2019, when it presented a picture of the M87 black hole.EHT Collaboration

Such fireworks, which can outshine galaxies by a thousandfold, can be seen across the universe; when first observed in the early 1960s, they were called quasars. Their discovery led physicists and astronomers to take seriously the notion that black holes existed.

What gave rise to such behemoths of nothingness is a mystery. Dense wrinkles in the primordial energies of the Big Bang? Monster runaway stars that collapsed and consumed their surroundings in the dawning years of the universe?

The center of the Milky Way coincides with a faint source of radio noise called Sagittarius A* (pronounced Sagittarius A-star). Astronomers including Andrea Ghez of the University of California, Los Angeles and Reinhard Genzel of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics had calculated that whatever was there had the mass of 4.14 million suns. They reached that estimate by tracking the orbits of stars and gas clouds swirling about the center of the Milky Way and measuring their velocities at one-third the speed of light. For their achievement, Dr. Genzel and Dr. Ghez won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2020.

If it was not a black hole, neither Einstein nor anyone else knew what it could be.

Chasing a shadow

Proving that it was a black hole was another job entirely.

According to research that goes back to a 1967 paper by the physicist James Bardeen, the Sagittarius black hole, if it were there, would appear as a ghostly dark circle amid a haze of radio waves. At 50 million miles across, this hollow shadow would appear about as big from Earth as an orange on the moon.

Astronomers have been trying to sharpen the acuity of their telescopes to resolve the shadow of that orange. But ionized electrons and protons in interstellar space scatter the radio waves into a blur that obscures details of the source. “It’s like looking through shower glass,” Dr. Doeleman said recently.

To see deeper into the black hole shadow, researchers needed to be able to tune their radio telescopes to shorter wavelengths that could penetrate the haze. And they needed a bigger telescope.

Sync your calendar with the solar system

Never miss an eclipse, a meteor shower, a rocket launch or any other astronomical and space event that's out of this world.

Exploring the Solar System

A guide to the spacecraft beyond Earth’s orbit.

In 2009, Dr. Doeleman and his colleagues formed the Event Horizon Telescope. Today, the collaborative project employs 11 different radio telescopes around the world.

The telescope is named after the point of no return around a black hole. The team scored its first triumph in April 2019, when it presented a picture of the M87 black hole. In 2021, team members refined their data to reveal magnetic fields swirling around the black hole like a finely grooved rifle barrel pumping matter and energy into the void.

The data for Sagittarius A* were recorded during the same observing run in 2017 that produced the M87 image, but with more antennas — eight instead of seven — because the team was able to include a South Pole telescope that could not see M87.

Sagittarius A*, the black hole in the Milky Way galaxy, was a harder target. It is less than one-thousandth the mass and size of the M87 hole and, therefore, evolves a thousand times faster. The M87 black hole barely budges during a weeklong observing run, but Sagittarius A* changes its appearance as often as every five minutes, “burbling and gurgling” in the words of Dr. Ozel.

Dr. Doeleman said, “The key thing is that, for M87, after a week of observing, it’s hardly budged.” He likened it to “the Buddha, just sitting there.”

By comparison, he said, the Sagittarius black hole was “whirling.” An orbit around it can take as little as four minutes or as long as a half-hour, depending on how it is spinning. “So over a night of observing. it’s changing while you’re collecting data,” he said. “You’re trying to trying to take a picture of something with the lens cap off and you just get this blurry mess.”

Dr. Doeleman’s new goal is to expand the network to include more antennas and gain enough coverage to produce a movie of the Sagittarius black hole. The challenge for black-hole cinema will be to separate what stays the same from what changes — to delineate the underlying structure of the black hole from the matter that is moving around in it.

The results could be spectacular and informative, said Janna Levin, a gravitational theorist at Barnard College of Columbia University, who was not part of the project. “I’m not bored with pictures of black holes yet,” she said."

The Milky Way’s Black Hole Comes to Light - The New York Times

What is the Grandfather Paradox? | Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains…

Apple. Doomed. Finally.

Clearview AI settles suit and agrees to limit sales of facial recognition database.

“The facial recognition software maker is largely prohibited from selling its database of photos to private companies.

May 9, 2022Updated 2:17 p.m. ET

Clearview AI, the facial recognition software maker, on Monday settled a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and agreed to limit its face database in the United States primarily to government agencies and not allow most American companies to have access to it.

Under the settlement, which was filed with an Illinois state court, Clearview will not sell its database of what it said were more than 20 billion facial photos to most private individuals and businesses in the country. But the company can largely still sell that database to federal and state agencies.

The agreement is the latest blow to the New York-based start-up, which built its facial recognition software by scraping photos from the web and popular sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram. Clearview then sold its software to local police departments and government agencies, including the F.B.I. and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

But its technology has been deemed illegal in Canada, Australia and parts of Europe for violating privacy laws. Clearview also faces a provisional $22.6 million fine in Britain, as well as a 20 million-euro fine from Italy’s data protection agency.

“Clearview can no longer treat people’s unique biometric identifiers as an unrestricted source of profits,” Nathan Freed Wessler, a deputy director with the A.C.L.U.’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, said in a statement about the settlement. “Other companies would be wise to take note, and other states should follow Illinois’s lead in enacting strong biometric privacy laws.”

Floyd Abrams, a First Amendment expert hired by Clearview to defend the company’s right to gather publicly available information and make it searchable, said the company was “pleased to put this litigation behind it.”

“To avoid a protracted, costly and distracting legal dispute with the A.C.L.U. and others, Clearview AI has agreed to continue to not provide its services to law enforcement agencies in Illinois for a period of time,” he said.

The A.C.L.U. filed its lawsuit in May 2020 on behalf of groups representing victims of domestic violence, undocumented immigrants and sex workers. The group accused Clearview of violating Illinois’s Biometric Information Privacy Act, a state law that prohibits private entities from using citizens’ bodily identifiers, including algorithmic maps of their faces, without consent.

“This is a huge win for the most vulnerable people in Illinois,” said Linda Xóchitl Tortolero, a plaintiff in the case and the head of Mujeres Latinas en Acción, an advocacy group for survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence. “For a lot of Latinas, many who are undocumented and have low levels of IT or social media literacy, not understanding how technology can be used against you is a huge challenge.”

One of Clearview’s sales methods was to offer free trials to potential customers, including private businesses, government employees and police officers. Under the settlement, the company will have a more formal process around trial accounts, ensuring that individual police officers have permission from their employers to use the facial recognition app.

Clearview is also prohibited from selling to any Illinois-based entity, private or public, for five years as part of the agreement. After that, it can resume doing business with local or state law enforcement agencies in the state, Mr. Wessler said.

In a key exception, Clearview will still be able to provide its database to U.S. banks and financial institutions under a carve-out in the Illinois law. Hoan Ton-That, chief executive of Clearview AI, said the company did “not have plans” to provide the database “to entities besides government agencies at this time.”

The settlement does not mean that Clearview cannot sell any product to corporations. It will still be able to sell its facial recognition algorithm, without the database of 20 billion images, to companies. Its algorithm helps match people’s faces to any database that a customer provides.

“There are a number of other consent-based uses for Clearview’s technology that the company has the ability to market more broadly,” Mr. Ton-That said.

As part of the settlement, Clearview did not admit any liability and agreed to pay $250,000 in attorneys’ fees to the plaintiffs. The settlement is subject to approval by an Illinois state judge.“

Has Apple Lost its Soul? — 'After Steve' Review