Originally Posted by
mtofell
I've been with T-Mobile for nearly 20 years and can say their overall coverage has come a long ways. I used to be the butt of all the jokes when out camping with my snooty Verizon/ATT friends but over the last few years have several times been the only one with a signal. So, the overall coverage really just depends where you are I suppose.
As for the wifi device it sounds like it may not be taking full advantage of the signal. I know these hotspot devices are a VERY small market segment and have to think they don't get much attention or updating. I'm curious why you don't just tether off your current phone plan? Or, if you are with another carrier, how about just getting a T-Mobile phone to use as a hotspot?
One last note on T-Mobile - anyone having slow tethering speeds be sure you have a plan that allows for fast speeds. There are lots of plans that give the phone great speeds but tethering/hot-spotting is way throttled down. The kids at the stores often times aren't even aware. I once sat in a store for 2+ hours with my laptop and phone trying to figure out the problem with one of the reps. Only to find out my plan inherently throttled down the hot-spotting. Needless to say I was less than impressed knowledge of the rep.
I know that T-Mobile hotspot tethering even at 4G LTE (Pixel 3 does not have 5G) could get up to 60Mbps down, 20Mbps up, 17ms ping at my house which is really great. The only problem with phone hotspot is that even with the One Plus plan, you only get 20Gb of 4G speed per month, after that it could drop to 3G speed. For people who actually need to have a dedicated hotspot, 20Gb may not be enough. I think the Inseego M2000 plan gives you 100GB per month for $50. So far no one actually said the Inseego M2000 is bad, just that previous T-Mobile hotspot device was bad. Maybe the M2000 is really amazing. I think OP should try it if he could return the device if it is not that great.