If you want to know how to make T-Mobile Home Internet faster, we recently created a set of steps to help you achieve that.
We know that T-Mobile offers the country’s most extensive 5G network, with over four times more coverage than their nearest competitor.
They also provide the fastest speeds above 300Mbps that you can enjoy for your home.
Let’s find out how to speed up your connection.
To improve your T-Mobile Home Internet speeds, you want to make sure that your Gateway is in the best spot in your home. T-Mobile’s Internet App can help you connect to the nearest 5G tower.
You also want to use 5G WiFi and change frequencies, so devices connected to your gateway get to enjoy lightning-fast speeds.
Factors on How to Speed Up T-Mobile Home Internet
Now that you have a good idea of how to speed up your T-Mobile internet, let’s take a closer look at some factors that can improve your connection.
Even if you have the best coverage, but your WiFi settings are not optimized, you won’t be able to speed up your internet.
VPNs and other connection tools can also affect how fast your internet is.
Here are the problems that you’re going to face with a slow internet connection:
1. Gateway Location
The location of your Gateway in your home matters. You want to place it at the best possible spot to get better signal quality.
2. WiFi Configuration
It may not be that obvious, but WiFi configurations can make or break your connection. Some settings will be slow, but unlocking a few will unleash your internet’s potential.
3. VPN and Other Connections
It’s easy for a VPN to mess up your internet. It’s not just your VPN; firewall settings can also mess up your connection and slow your internet down.
4. Temporary Glitches
Glitches and incompatibilities can happen with your hardware which can cause a slow connection.
These are the primary issues that could have affected your T-Mobile Home Internet making it slow.
We can now move forward with the troubleshooting steps to help you speed up your connection!
How to Make T-Mobile Home Internet Faster – Steps!
Before we go ahead and go on with the fixes for your slow T-Mobile Home Internet, there’s one thing that you need to do first to eliminate minor bugs and errors with your Gateway.
A quick reboot of your T-Mobile Gateway should do the trick. Switch it off and turn it back on, then check your speeds.
In the case that a device restart does not resolve the issue, we can get into more advanced steps:
Step #1: Power Cycle Your Home Internet Gateway
A reboot can only do so much to clear your device of corrupted files in its memory.
However, it may not be able to flush out everything. One way to ensure that all temporary files are cleared is by performing a power cycle.
Here’s how to power cycle your T-Mobile Gateway:
- Turn off your Gateway by pressing the power button.
- Unplug it from the power outlet.
- Wait for about 2 to 5 minutes to totally discharge it.
- Plug it back in and switch it on.
Tip: In case you’re using other network devices such as a mesh WiFi system and extenders, now is the time to do a power cycle on all of them.
Step #2: Use the T-Mobile Internet App to Connect to a 5G Tower
Since T-Mobile’s Home Internet service relies on their expansive 5G network, you’ll need your Gateway to have a direct connection to one of their high-speed towers.
It’s difficult to know the location of T-Mobile’s towers without any help. The good news is that their app has a feature that helps you visualize signals coming from the towers.
Using the app should allow you to put your Gateway in the best possible location in your home.
Here’s how to use the T-Mobile app to connect to the nearest tower:
- Open the T-Mobile app on your phone.
- Choose Launch placement assistant to start the guide.
- Share your location or enter your address.
- Select Map view or Camera view to see the signal direction.
- Follow the Signal direction results to find the best location.
Note: The app will show you the direction of the nearest T-Mobile tower so you can find the best place for your Gateway.
Step #3: Turn off Your VPN
VPN apps and services can seriously slow down your internet connection. It’s true even if you’re using high-speed 5G internet from T-Mobile Home Internet.
These apps can also totally disconnect your internet as they can change your connection settings.
If you have a VPN and are suddenly experiencing a slow internet connection, you’ll want to switch it off.
Anyway, there’s a good chance that the issue will be temporary and not affect your internet after turning it back on again.
Here’s how to switch off your VPN app:
- Open the VPN app on your computer or phone.
- Disconnect your VPN from the server.
- Restart your computer or phone.
- Check if your internet continues to be sluggish.
Note: At this point, if your internet speeds return to normal, you can try reconnecting to your VPN to see if it slows down again.
Step #4: Enable 5G WiFi
How to make your T-Mobile Home Internet faster? The answer is WiFi. Not all wireless signals are created equal.
The quality of these signals can directly affect your internet speeds. Since you use your phone most of the time to connect to the internet, you want to use the best WiFi signal available.
In the case of your T-Mobile Gateway, it’s enabling its 5G WiFi frequency features.
Here’s how to turn on 5G WiFi on your Gateway:
- Open your web browser and enter http://192.168.12.1
- Log in using your Gateway’s username and password.
- Navigate to Basic, then Network.
- Go to WiFi.
- Select 5GHz, then click on Save.
Pro Tip: You’ll find the default username and password of your Gateway on the label of your device.
Step #5: Change Your WiFi Channel
Now that you’re using 5G WiFi, you can still speed it up by choosing specific channels.
You can think of channels as different lanes on a highway. Choose a less crowded channel, and data come to you much faster than on congested ones.
Apart from enabling 5G WiFi, you can also change the channels at which your wireless network runs.
Here’s how to change the WiFi channel on your Gateway:
- Login to your Gateway, similar to Step #4.
- Go to the Expert menu, then Network.
- Select WiFi, then choose 5GHz.
- Choose a different channel.
- You can also choose a different channel bandwidth.
Tip: The recommended channels for 5G WiFi are 36, 40, 44, 149, and 157.
If none of these steps work, you can also attempt to reset your T-Mobile Gateway to revert it to its original settings.
You can also contact T-Mobile’s customer support to ask for assistance regarding your internet speeds.
They’re also possibly suffering from outages or doing maintenance activities, slowing down your internet.
Read Next: T-Mobile Phone Not Receiving Calls?
Bottom Line
Now that you know how to make T-Mobile Home Internet Faster, you can take advantage of their ultra-fast 5G network for your home internet needs.
As long as it’s not a network outage, you should be able to speed up your internet in no time.
Finn Wheatley holds a Master’s Degree in Computer Science from UCL, London. He helped small data science consultancy firms, helping large corporations to grow their data capabilities, deploy advanced machine learning-based analytics and troubleshoot tech-related issues. Check out more about him here.