I have 5G at home, so why can’t I get 5G internet at home?

I have to confess: sometimes 5G it still puzzles me. One of the questions I’m often asked is, “I can get 5G on my phone at home, but I can’t get my carrier’s 5G home internet product. Why?”

I ran into this myself when I switched carriers earlier this year. I went from AT&T a T Mobile and I was immediately impressed with its 5G performance on my phone. But even though I got T-Mobile 5G cellular service at home, my address wasn’t eligible for their home internet service. My immediate reaction: What’s up?

It’s not just T-Mobile. The same applies to Verizon, also. Its 5G home internet product is also not categorically available at all addresses covered by the company’s own 5G coverage map. Even if you have Verizon ultra broadband service in your neighborhood, you’re not sure you can subscribe Verizon 5G Home Internet.

Wait, start at the beginning. Do T-Mobile and Verizon offer 5G home internet?

Yes. T-Mobile and Verizon are using cellular radio waves to offer dedicated 5G home internet plans. Each provider’s plan features easy, comprehensive pricing that eliminates equipment fees, data caps, term agreements, and other additional hassles often associated with Internet Service Providers.

T-Mobile Home Internet offers a plan for $50 per month ($30 for eligible Magenta Max customers). Verizon offers two plans: Verizon 5G Home ($50/mo.) and Verizon 5G Home Plus ($70/mo.). Qualifying Verizon Unlimited Mobile Plans can also take 50% off the price of either plan. Simplicity and a straightforward approach seem to be the key for both companies.

AT&T does not currently have a 5G home internet offering.

Is the home broadband business just a side hustle for these operators?

I was tempted to think that getting into the ISP game was just a joke for these companies, but telecommunications expert Jeff Moore, director of Wave7 Research, sees more at stake.

“Mobility is T-Mobile’s core business and, for the most part, it’s Verizon’s core business,” Moore said. “But T-Mobile, in particular, tells Wall Street that in addition to selling [home internet] business services, also says it’s moving more and more into rural America. I don’t think it’s just a PR stunt.”

Some of the early figures support Moore’s assessment. In the middle of April, T-Mobile proudly announced that it had reached 1 million customers in just one year after the product’s national launch. T-Mobile Home Internet is available to more than 40 million households, and according to T-Mobile, one-third of those households are in rural communities and small towns.

In general, T-Mobile has been pretty aggressive in its introduction to customers. In May, he began his internet freedom thrust, leaning towards Americans dissatisfied with ISPs and encourages consumers to “break away from the Big Internet” by trying T-Mobile Home Internet. To entice customers, it offers a free 15-day trial drive (so you can try it out without having to change your current provider), a fixed-price guarantee (you pay $50 per month for as long as you remain a customer, with no lingering fears of price increases after one year, as is the case with many Internet service providers), and additional savings of $20 per month with qualifying Magenta Max mobile plans.

Verizon has also been ambitious with its offerings, but it sounds less like an “ISPs are evil” note. That’s probably because Verizon Fios – the company’s fiber optic Internet service – is an ISP and one of the few that regularly receives high ratings. In his case, 5G home internet seems less like a swipe at “Great Internet” and more like a move to extend Verizon’s home internet game beyond the Northeast (Verizon Fios’s playground) and into the rest of the country.

If T-Mobile and Verizon are serious about home internet, why isn’t it as widely available as their mainstream 5G coverage yet?

when my colleague Eli Blumenthal tested Verizon’s 5G homenoted that the 5G connection on his iPhone was better than that on his 5G Home hub.

So far I’ve found Verizon 5G to be faster, at least for raw speeds, when plugged directly into the iPhone 13 Pro Max. The connection for the 5G Home hub always seems slower, maybe it doesn’t have priority. pic.twitter.com/7nkebDoeW2

— Eli Blumenthal (@eliblumenthal) April 26, 2022

I think he’s onto something.

A Verizon spokesperson told me by email that it designed its network with its mobile customers in mind. “We continue to allocate spectrum to ensure our wireless customers have the reliability they’ve come to expect from Verizon,” they said. “As we roll out more spectrum, beyond what our models show we need for the highest reliability for our mobile customers, we can also offer 5G Home service.”

5G enables higher connection density — approximately 1 million devices per square kilometer — than previous generations of cellular connectivity. Its alot? If it’s about 100 times better than 4G, but it is not unlimited. Because a home Internet product makes heavy use of a mobile network’s capacity, Moore believes that T-Mobile has also been judicious about how it sells home Internet.

pointed me to a recent youtube interview provided by Kendra Lord, director of geospatial engineering and analysis at T-Mobile, comparing the availability of 5G internet in the home to the number of seats on an airplane.

“It’s not just the number of households that we think could get [T-Mobile Home Internet]he said, “but to how many within a given sector could we say yes?

When I contacted T-Mobile for more information, a spokesperson corroborated that mindset. “There are still many households that still don’t qualify for home internet, even though they can get 5G on their mobile device, and that’s intentional,” they told me via email.

“Our fixed wireless home internet runs on the extra capacity in our wireless network. In some areas, we have extra capacity on the network, but in others we don’t. Therefore, we allocate home Internet access sector by sector, household by household.”

In other words, it’s entirely possible that I could get 5G cellular service in my home, and my next door neighbor might even have T-Mobile home internet, but my address might still not be available for that home internet product due to the ability. limits on cell phone coverage in my area.

So the next time you ask, “Why can’t I get 5G internet at home even though I have 5G on my phone at home?” I advise you to stand firm: both carriers are actively working on optimizing their networks for mobile first, home internet second, in a dynamic process that changes from month to month.