T-Mobile is entering the world of home internet, with the Un-Carrier officially launching its T-Mobile Home Internet service on April 7, 2021. T-Mobile has been trialing Home Internet with customers as far back as March 2019, and in the two years since then, it’s been gathering feedback and improving the service to gear up for a proper launch.
The purpose of T-Mobile Home Internet is to provide internet access to people in rural areas where their internet options may be extremely limited or nonexistent. Much of rural America still relies on DSL or satellite-powered internet solutions, resulting in slow speeds, high prices, and no competition to move the needle forward. It’s a problem that will require enormous amounts of time and money to correct, and T-Mobile is hoping it can be part of the solution.
So, what’s included with T-Mobile Home Internet? T-Mobile says the service costs $60/month outright (without AutoPay enabled) with all taxes and fees included in the price. There also aren’t any contracts, meaning customers can come and go as they please. Internet is delivered to people’s homes via T-Mobile’s 4G and 5G network via a gateway device that also acts as a router.
Pros & Cons Of T-Mobile 5G Home Internet
For that $60/month rate, T-Mobile Home Internet delivers average download speeds of 100Mbps with no data caps of any kind. While that’s nowhere near as good of a deal compared to services like Xfinity and Spectrum, it’s far and away better than internet providers that currently have a monopoly on rural parts of the country. DSL internet from Frontier, for example, costs $45/month for the first 12 months and has max download speeds of 12Mbps. There’s no data cap with Frontier, but the company also charges an $85 activation fee, $10 disconnect fee, and the monthly rate increases after the first 12 months. There are also old-fashioned satellite internet providers like HughesNet, with its ‘recommended’ plan including 20GB of monthly data and 25Mbps download speeds for $70/month.
In that context, T-Mobile Home Internet is a lot more appealing. It’s relatively affordable, promises substantially faster speeds, and should be a lot easier for people to set up. That said, some uncertainties remain. While T-Mobile says that 100Mbps is the “expected average speed,” that doesn’t mean 100Mbps is what customers will get 24/7. Speed fluctuations are expected for any internet service, but it could be especially noticeable with T-Mobile Home Internet considering it’s powered by the company’s wireless towers. Furthermore, T-Mobile has already increased the price of Home Internet once — up from $50/month when it was in the testing phase. The current $60/month rate is still a good value compared to a lot of other rural internet providers, but if it goes up again, there might be a different conversation that needs to be had.
Overall, T-Mobile Home Internet looks like a pretty strong product. Internet access in rural America has been ignored for far too long, and while T-Mobile isn’t going to completely fix things on its own, this is a big step forward in starting that process. Between this and what SpaceX is doing with Starlink, good internet access regardless of location is slowly becoming a reality.
