Anyone know if you must be an existing TMobile customer to get this? We’ve had a Sprint number for 10+ years. Sprint of course was just bought by TMobile. I sat on the phone for 40 min trying to talk to them about this internet thing and they immediately say “your number is a pre-paid account.” I’ve never owned/used a pre-paid line in the my life. So I get bounced to the main account line. They insist that it’s a pre-paid. Their best guess is the number is “still a Sprint number, so it shows as a pre-paid on our end.” They bounce me to pre-paid customer service to straighten it out...”we’re sorry, our office is now closed.”
Not cool.
Obviously I agree that transmission through vacuum is faster than through a medium, but isn’t comparing the speed of RF transport to the speed of optical transport apples and oranges? Light through vacuum is faster than light through glass, but light through glass is faster than RF through vacuum, right?
True, I haven’t paid attention to the sat to sat transmission, I’ve only been concerned about the ground links. If they really can deliver latency that’s 70% less than fiber over distance then they do have something. They tried to convince the FCC that they would have latency below 10ms and failed, I think the FCC told them they’d believe 100ms, but the constellation is still tiny and if they can eventually deliver say London to Tokyo with round trip latency of say 50ms at volume then they’ll have something because subsea is running 145ms to 210ms for that trip. The US government would be their anchor customer, drones would work so much better with less network latency.You aren't aware of how Starlink works then. The satellite to satellite connections are lasers. No RF except for the ground links.
And I think the net difference in speed to half way around the world is about 30% - like NY to Shanghai for instance. That is HUGE, and will put the undersea cables out of business (the ones being built explicitly to be the shortest/fastest path for financial transaction purposes).
Thanks for the education, I’ve been in this business for decades but never had to worry about relative propagation speeds. It makes sense that they are both at the speed of light in vac, I just never thought of how it degrades over fiber other than knowing that generally the latency goes up over distance by much more than is explained by the distance.Like I said, details matter. Depends on the standard, the hardware, and the requirements of what those endpoints are. I've seen fast and slow in both fiber and satcom (I used to design fiber optic transceivers at 2.4 and 10 Gbps). Light through glass is SLOWER than RF through vacuum. Apologies to quantum mechanics, but we'll operate in the wave domain for a moment: light and RF both propagate at c in a vacuum. Satcom is RF through air/vacuum (essentially the same); fiber optic is light through glass (take fused silica, maybe doped a bit, dielectric constant about 3.8). Therefore an optical link (through fiber) is about half the speed of a satcom RF link (through space/air). Apples and oranges related by square root of dielectric constant
True, I haven’t paid attention to the sat to sat transmission, I’ve only been concerned about the ground links. If they really can deliver latency that’s 70% less than fiber over distance then they do have something. They tried to convince the FCC that they would have latency below 10ms and failed, I think the FCC told them they’d believe 100ms, but the constellation is still tiny and if they can eventually deliver say London to Tokyo with round trip latency of say 50ms at volume then they’ll have something because subsea is running 145ms to 210ms for that trip. The US government would be their anchor customer, drones would work so much better with less network latency.
Thanks for the info, I’m going to go back through their industry info and get better informed.
We’ll have to wait a while to know, it sounds like they are just starting the work with the sat-to-sat “space lasers” and that the current private beta results of “up to 100mbps” doesn’t include that functionality. Obviously this will change the existing satellite model, gotta think more about what it does to wireless and fiber providers in rural areas that currently depend on state and federal subsidies. I don’t blame starlink for chasing some federal subsidies, but I hope that they don’t need them or win them.I think the net _difference_ is 30%. 1/3 less, not 2/3 less. Even 1/3 is a lot. In terms of latency it is evidently playable for video games. I’m sure not for really good players that need every possible edge, at least not yet, but SO much better than HughesNet and the like. More satellites will scale up the bandwidth and reduce latency somewhat. And they are still building and tuning the system. It is already good enough to replace my cable modem. I am trying to find a place in the (relative) sticks and lots of places I look at have very poor broadband. Some have decent cell data available but not all.
No dice for me. The guy I got was having a hard time getting past his system.
Those who currently have it can continue it as long as it is not abused. From reports people using around 700GB or more a month.
Did you follow the steps? 2 more friends just got signed up yesterday and I literally just got off the phone walking another friend through it. Pay attention to the steps regarding telephone number entry. I think that is where those of you who are getting not available are messing up."Not available in your location"
(in a busy part of JoCo)
Regarding T Mobile Home internet the only thing that is different is that on the first page you are entering 999-999-9999 as the phone number. All other info is correct. On the next page you enter your correct phone number and info. At that point all info is correct. No hacking. Just a workaround to be able to get to the next page saying you qualify.Dummies should make it easier to sign up. Hacking your IMEI or having to lie on signup page isn’t exactly a user friendly way to do things. Lol.
CHRIS
I did. Got a congrats you qualify and then they will call me. Called them immediately and the guy said my phone number wasnt pulling up anything.Did you follow the steps? 2 more friends just got signed up yesterday and I literally just got off the phone walking another friend through it. Pay attention to the steps regarding telephone number entry. I think that is where those of you who are getting not available are messing up.
I would call back. A couple of friends had to call back to finally get it set upI did. Got a congrats you qualify and then they will call me. Called them immediately and the guy said my phone number wasnt pulling up anything.
I got a call back early today. Started going through the process only to hit another wall. My name/SSN is on the wife’s Sprint account, so I technically have a T-Mobile account. No problem...except I have to go to a physical store location to port over to a T-Mobile number. Ok...I’ll risk my life and go to a cell phone store in the hood (nearest T-Mobile store). She starts the process only to get road locked AGAIN because we have an open order waiting for the iPhone 12Pro. I call to cancel that order, go back to the store, BANG, another wall. We’ve got two months left of an 18 month lease to pay off. The lease is $40/month but the buy out is $333.
At this point I must have looked like the demon beast guy from Tenacious D, as the girl went into full apology mode. I considered my options:
A. Make for some good security cam footage that would ultimately go viral on YouTube as i bull on a china shop the place.
B. Calmly walk out and thank her anyway, demonstrating that there are people in the world that don’t wreck other people’s stuff just because they didn’t get their way.
Long story short: we’ll be putting the Internet thing in the wife’s name this evening. They better not give me crap about that. I already behaved myself once today. I’m all outta behaves.
I was going to keep them separate. But when they saw my SSN tied to an existing Sprint account, they said I’d have to put the home internet on that same account.Just out of curiosity are you trying to get your cell phone service switched to T Mobile as well as get the T Mobile Home Internet? I'm not a T Mobile customer (and neither are my friends who got the Home Internet) and we still got the home internet service. Didn't know if you were trying to kill two birds with one stone and they were making you jump through hoops since you already technically have an account or if they were telling you you had to sign up for the phone service too in order to get home internet.
@JimP42 you might find this interesting. Looks like one year of Starlink service to 45 locations for $300k. Seems to be a little more than $550/mo. Can’t blame them for a little suckling at the government (or in this case maybe nonprofit) teet, but wow.
https://www.telecompetitor.com/rura...test-for-spacex-starlink-satellite-broadband/
Yeah, just saw it at CNBC.The info on the public beta just went out. 499 for equipment and 99/mo.
SpaceX Starlink Pricing Revealed as Satellite Broadband Operator Expands Beta - Telecompetitor
SpaceX is calling its satellite broadband service "Better Than Nothing" -- an apt name considering that Starlink pricing is set atwww.telecompetitor.com
I don't drink, but I'll take a Diet Sun-Drop if we ever cross paths. Glad it's working for you. I think that with what T-Mobile is doing other companies will have to offer something similar to compete.@easternnc4me I owe you a beer if we ever cross paths. You saved me from the debil that is AT&T their 5mbps crap.
Looks like I am in the same Boat I have a sprint account 5 lines 3 phones under lease 2 paid off my nearest Sprint store is 60 miles away I will try to do it under the wifes SSNI got a call back early today. Started going through the process only to hit another wall. My name/SSN is on the wife’s Sprint account, so I technically have a T-Mobile account. No problem...except I have to go to a physical store location to port over to a T-Mobile number. Ok...I’ll risk my life and go to a cell phone store in the hood (nearest T-Mobile store). She starts the process only to get road locked AGAIN because we have an open order waiting for the iPhone 12Pro. I call to cancel that order, go back to the store, BANG, another wall. We’ve got two months left of an 18 month lease to pay off. The lease is $40/month but the buy out is $333.
At this point I must have looked like the demon beast guy from Tenacious D, as the girl went into full apology mode. I considered my options:
A. Make for some good security cam footage that would ultimately go viral on YouTube as i bull on a china shop the place.
B. Calmly walk out and thank her anyway, demonstrating that there are people in the world that don’t wreck other people’s stuff just because they didn’t get their way.
Long story short: we’ll be putting the Internet thing in the wife’s name this evening. They better not give me crap about that. I already behaved myself once today. I’m all outta behaves.
Some people on the Facebook group had an issue like this. Some got it resolved by rebooting the router. Others had it fixed with a call to tech support. My guess would be with the power loss once it came back up it connected to either another tower or more congested band.Day 3 on the TMobile thing.
Yesterday was an anomaly with the storm and losing power. Once power came on though, speed struggled to get above 1-2mbps.
This morning started strong at 40+mbps. But now it flutters around 2-3.
This is a bit frustrating. Might give them a call later.