Where is T-Mobile Home Internet Available?

T-Mobile 5G Home Internet has become one of the fastest growing internet providers in the country. That’s not surprising, given the service’s fast speeds, cheap prices, and easy installation. But it’s T-Mobile’s wide-ranging availability that really makes it stand out.

Millions of people in the United States still aren’t covered by reliable fiber-optic internet providers. In more rural areas, options for high-speed internet are limited. This is where T-Mobile fills the gap.

We’ll go over everything you need to know about T-Mobile home internet availability and performance in this article. But first, you should check to see if it’s available in your area with this plan finder tool.

It’s not just T-Mobile. Other big cell phone carriers, like AT&T and Verizon, jumped into the 5G home internet market. How do the different options stack up? Here’s a quick look at the stats.

As you can see, there’s a wide range of prices and speeds. Since these services use cell phone towers, a lot of the performance you experience will depend on the specific location of your house.

That said, T-Mobile’s performance and availability tend to be better than AT&T’s in most areas. Meanwhile, Verizon is probably the highest performing of the three in certain major urban areas, where it uses higher-frequency cell towers to provide speeds up to 1,000 Mbps (which is faster than many cable and fiber internet connections).

If you live in an area with multiple 5G home internet providers, we suggest checking with the one that’s your cell phone carrier (if you use AT&T, Verizon, or T-Mobile) first. You may be eligible for a significant discount through your existing cell phone plan.

According to T-Mobile, the company’s 5G home internet service is available to over 50 million households in the United States. That’s a significant proportion of the country. While it’s not a perfect one-to-one map, you can get a good idea of T-Mobile’s home internet availability by checking out this interactive map of the company’s cell phone coverage.

T-Mobile’s coverage is truly impressive, especially in urban and suburban areas. It definitely has a wider range than what you’d see with Verizon’s 5G home internet service, which is mostly contained to specific metropolitan centers.

According to Allconnect, T-Mobile internet covers a full 75-85% of addresses in most metro areas, including over 80% of Dallas, 77% of San Diego, and 86% of Philadelphia. That means you can easily sign up for the service at one apartment or home and then take it with you if you move. (Just make sure you tell T-Mobile you’re moving first.)

While T-Mobile’s coverage extends into many semi-rural areas, offering a desperately needed unlimited data option, there are gaps. As you can see in the map above, there are some big white spots in certain Western states, like Nebraska, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, and Oregon. While we’d love to see T-Mobile 5G Home Internet availability expand in those areas, don’t hold your breath. Some areas will just have to stick with satellite internet for the foreseeable future.

As the name would suggest, T-Mobile 5G Home Internet uses a 5G network. But, there’s 5G and then there’s 5G, if you know what we mean.

5G just stands for the fifth generation of cell phone network technology (and 4G is fourth generation, etc). While there are some general ideas about offering higher data speeds and lower latency, there isn’t a strict definition for what constitutes a 4G vs. a 5G network.

In certain rural areas, T-Mobile’s 5G service runs through upgraded 4G cell phone towers, rather than some newer infrastructure. In other areas, T-Mobile has created brand new towers that send millimeter wave signals, which can give users significantly faster speeds. This faster form of 5G is what Verizon uses for its 5G Home Internet service in many areas.

When you go outside of your service area with your cell phone, you’ll often get the option to roam on another network. Unfortunately, that’s not how 5G home internet works. 5G Home Internet is sometimes called “fixed 5G” because service is limited to a specific address and cannot be moved without notifying your company of a change of address.

If you want a great set up to use in your RV when it’s rooted in one place for a long time, then 5G home internet may be a great option. But if you plan to hit the open road any time soon, we suggest checking out satellite internet options, like Starlink, or using a mobile hotspot device from a company like T-Mobile or Mint Mobile.

T-Mobile users can expect to see internet download speeds between 87 and 415 Mbps. That’s plenty of speed for streaming HD movies, binging Netflix, playing Fortnite online, and even doing a video conference (though you might experience more ping than you would with a wired connection).

That said, the specific speeds that you get with T-Mobile will depend largely on where you live and other conditions, like network congestion. Just like your cell phone signal, your 5G home internet signal can fluctuate depending on the time and your specific location.

The good news is that, according to Ookla’s latest network test, T-Mobile’s network is nearly twice as fast as the competition—AT&T and Verizon—on average. So, even if you’re experiencing fluctuations in speed with T-Mobile, you’re probably doing better than other 5G Home Internet customers.

Here’s a nifty little section where we answer your burning questions about T-Mobile’s 5G home internet availability and performance. You're welcome.

Yes, T-Mobile’s home internet service offers plenty of bandwidth for binging the latest season of House of the Dragon or the new Yellowstone spinoff. In most cases, you could have a couple of devices streaming HD video at once with T-Mobile 5G.

T-Mobile 5G Home Internet is always going to be less consistent than wired internet, like fiber or cable services. You could experience slowdowns at certain times of the day or if there are interferences in your wireless signal. That said, T-Mobile should be quick to respond to any major issues, and the company is consistently upgrading its infrastructure to accommodate higher speeds and more customers.

T-Mobile 5G Home Internet is a great service for small to medium sized households with two to four active devices. If you go much beyond that, you’ll probably start to see some bandwidth issues.

Yes, T-Mobile has gone from servicing about 30 million households to over 50 million households in just a couple of years. We expect to see that number continuing to grow in the coming months and years.

If T-Mobile 5G isn’t available in your area, it’s probably an infrastructure issue. The company needs to make sure that it has sufficient cell phone towers in a given area before it offers residential internet service. Otherwise, it might be far too much strain on existing cell phone customers.