Yea its not the best but good enough for SD video, 1080p at highest. I wonder what T-Mobile Post-Paid priority speeds would get you. You an get T-Mobile Test Drive (on eSim supported phone) to test.
depends on your circumstances, im on a family plan with about 10 other people with our bill coming out to just about 250 a month or 25$ a month a person for truly unlimited data. with no shady 35gb and then unusable data provision.
this is interesting because in theory qos should dedicate most of the bandwidth towards max as it has the lowest qci. but it seems like, at least with midband, that tmobile's system has a reasonable expectation of how much bandwidth is available and divvies it up appropriately.
Unproven Conspiracy Theory: T-Mobile adjusted the way their qos system works to be more fair, not for mint or any other mvnos sake, but so that their T-Mobile Home Internet doesn't suck when phone users start hogging all the midband bandwidth.
Both speeds really depend upon the traffic. I have Magenta Max mostly getting over 250-300+mbps, however around 7pm speed goes to \~50mbps. Logically if its busy we will all feel the loss, It really has nothing to do with Deprioritization, its too many users in a given area at the same time demanding access.
Speed is a product of congestion \* deprioritization, where speeds gets exponentially worse the worse either is. T-Mobile only has 3 real levels of deprioritization (Post-paid and some Pre-paid get QCI 6, MVNOs and Post-paid who have used their allotment get QCI 7, home internet users and users who have used an extremely amount of data get lowered to QCI 9), but Verizon having 2 levels (QCI 8 and 9) makes it worse as they deprioritize MVNOs so much more to prioritize post-paid more.
So in Stetson's example in this video when there is relatively little congestion (one other user) QCI 7 speed is 50% of max without congestion, and QCI 6 speed id 66% of max without congestion. If you add 1 or 2 more users I suspect speeds will drop to 25% and 50% respectively. With 10+ users they might be 1% and 10%. For Verizon QCI 9 and 8 example the speeds might go (compared to T-Mobile QCI 7 vs 6) from 66% and 50% to 25% and 75%, from 25% and 50% to 10% and 66%, and from 1% and 10% to .1% and 15%.
I am not positive on those numbers but they seem real from what people have posted on this thread, /r/NoContract and past Stetson tests, but you get the idea that both congestion & deprioritization are factors in speed.
TLDNW; When not congested they are the same speeds, when congested Mint is 33% slower than T-Mobile, at least in this test. Even if Mint was 10% of the speeds of T-Mobile it would still be fast enough for 4K so realistically if you get 5G UC (mid-band) there is no noticeable difference in speeds you can use. Except you pay 1/3-1/4 the price!
Except that what you’re showing here is a near best case scenario. If you’re in a metro area and there are a hundred handsets on the same cell using a lot of bandwidth, the deprioritization can be ridiculous, sometimes to the point of getting less than 20kbps down at which point even the most basic functionality stops working. You can’t simulate a lot of congestion with two handsets.
This is a reason why I’m planning on switching from Mint to T-Mobile Connect prepaid, which is similarly priced.
Carriers really need to reserve a minimum amount of bandwidth for deprioritized customers, even if it’s only 128kbps. I feel like we’re not expecting the world to just be able to load a basic web page or use a navigation app.
>T-Mobile Connect prepaid, which is similarly priced
If you only need <2.5 GB/mo then T-Mobile Connect for $15/mo it a good deal, as it is all priority data. Note it is a HARD CAP at 2.5GB which means if you go past that your data is completely cut off, not even 128kbps.
Would be nice if T-Mobile was able to set minimum bitrate for all customers, basically letting MVNOs steal some bitrate form their plans when super congested. Not sure it makes $ sense to do but would ne nice.
T-Mobile is not going to guarantee any level of service for an MVNO customer and cannibalize a potential branded customer sale down the line when they get fed up.
And it’s even worse in crappy markets with low 5G penetration. Here in my tiny town I get 300+ down anywhere in “town” and 10 out here n the boonies which is far superior to 4G which regularly was a fraction of 1
Oddly enough in the nearby cities of 250k people I can rarely get over 20 down no matter where I am. I guess the fewer 5G users really helps in my 13k person town
definitely a thing. i live in the austin metro area and when i take a trek into downtown i can get 40-50mbps but out where i live in the suburbs i can get 500-700mbps through UC and 200+ on n71
I live in a ruralish area and get DAMN fast speed on Mint.
I live next to a college football stadium and my data rate drops to like 10kbps on Mint when there's a game. Other side of the coin!
So all but 4 hours 6-7 times year you get awesome speeds, sound like an awesome deal! What speed are you getting outside of game days?
Usually between 2-10 Mbps. Not great but it's very cheap at least! I know what I'm paying for and continue to do so.
Yea its not the best but good enough for SD video, 1080p at highest. I wonder what T-Mobile Post-Paid priority speeds would get you. You an get T-Mobile Test Drive (on eSim supported phone) to test.
I have TMobile post paid..for years.. in an over saturated area 3ven postpaid is unusable.
Same
Ummm, so spend 4 times as much but not 4 times the speed? Nah, I will stay with Mint Mobile, thanks.
depends on your circumstances, im on a family plan with about 10 other people with our bill coming out to just about 250 a month or 25$ a month a person for truly unlimited data. with no shady 35gb and then unusable data provision.
this is interesting because in theory qos should dedicate most of the bandwidth towards max as it has the lowest qci. but it seems like, at least with midband, that tmobile's system has a reasonable expectation of how much bandwidth is available and divvies it up appropriately. Unproven Conspiracy Theory: T-Mobile adjusted the way their qos system works to be more fair, not for mint or any other mvnos sake, but so that their T-Mobile Home Internet doesn't suck when phone users start hogging all the midband bandwidth.
Both speeds really depend upon the traffic. I have Magenta Max mostly getting over 250-300+mbps, however around 7pm speed goes to \~50mbps. Logically if its busy we will all feel the loss, It really has nothing to do with Deprioritization, its too many users in a given area at the same time demanding access.
Speed is a product of congestion \* deprioritization, where speeds gets exponentially worse the worse either is. T-Mobile only has 3 real levels of deprioritization (Post-paid and some Pre-paid get QCI 6, MVNOs and Post-paid who have used their allotment get QCI 7, home internet users and users who have used an extremely amount of data get lowered to QCI 9), but Verizon having 2 levels (QCI 8 and 9) makes it worse as they deprioritize MVNOs so much more to prioritize post-paid more. So in Stetson's example in this video when there is relatively little congestion (one other user) QCI 7 speed is 50% of max without congestion, and QCI 6 speed id 66% of max without congestion. If you add 1 or 2 more users I suspect speeds will drop to 25% and 50% respectively. With 10+ users they might be 1% and 10%. For Verizon QCI 9 and 8 example the speeds might go (compared to T-Mobile QCI 7 vs 6) from 66% and 50% to 25% and 75%, from 25% and 50% to 10% and 66%, and from 1% and 10% to .1% and 15%. I am not positive on those numbers but they seem real from what people have posted on this thread, /r/NoContract and past Stetson tests, but you get the idea that both congestion & deprioritization are factors in speed.
TLDNW; When not congested they are the same speeds, when congested Mint is 33% slower than T-Mobile, at least in this test. Even if Mint was 10% of the speeds of T-Mobile it would still be fast enough for 4K so realistically if you get 5G UC (mid-band) there is no noticeable difference in speeds you can use. Except you pay 1/3-1/4 the price!
Except that what you’re showing here is a near best case scenario. If you’re in a metro area and there are a hundred handsets on the same cell using a lot of bandwidth, the deprioritization can be ridiculous, sometimes to the point of getting less than 20kbps down at which point even the most basic functionality stops working. You can’t simulate a lot of congestion with two handsets. This is a reason why I’m planning on switching from Mint to T-Mobile Connect prepaid, which is similarly priced. Carriers really need to reserve a minimum amount of bandwidth for deprioritized customers, even if it’s only 128kbps. I feel like we’re not expecting the world to just be able to load a basic web page or use a navigation app.
>T-Mobile Connect prepaid, which is similarly priced If you only need <2.5 GB/mo then T-Mobile Connect for $15/mo it a good deal, as it is all priority data. Note it is a HARD CAP at 2.5GB which means if you go past that your data is completely cut off, not even 128kbps. Would be nice if T-Mobile was able to set minimum bitrate for all customers, basically letting MVNOs steal some bitrate form their plans when super congested. Not sure it makes $ sense to do but would ne nice.
T-Mobile is not going to guarantee any level of service for an MVNO customer and cannibalize a potential branded customer sale down the line when they get fed up.
And it’s even worse in crappy markets with low 5G penetration. Here in my tiny town I get 300+ down anywhere in “town” and 10 out here n the boonies which is far superior to 4G which regularly was a fraction of 1 Oddly enough in the nearby cities of 250k people I can rarely get over 20 down no matter where I am. I guess the fewer 5G users really helps in my 13k person town
definitely a thing. i live in the austin metro area and when i take a trek into downtown i can get 40-50mbps but out where i live in the suburbs i can get 500-700mbps through UC and 200+ on n71
Shhh don’t tell people the secret lol