Help| USB Tethering with Moto E4 on T-Mobile Tablet One Plan

[ChuckG73]

Good Day, I have left VZW for T-Mobile and am mostly happy with the decision. I have a house in Deltaville VA that has no options available for internet but I do get 4G LTE Cell coverage from the big 3 (VZW, ATT, TMo).

I was using a VZW Home LTE Phone Router that alloted me 20GB of LTE Internet for the house and after that throttled to 2G (unusable). Moving to T-Mobile created a problem - now what am I going to do for internet?

So here is what I did:

I got a data only sim and put it in a Moto E4 and added on T-Mobile Internationl plan that gives it unlimited 4G LTE Hotspot (50GB).
I purcahesd a $17 GL-iNet-MT300N mini travel router and USB tehetherd the Moto e4 to the Travel router and then plugged the router into Goog WiFi. I now have whole house internet giving me @ 2Mbps Down and 6Mbps Up.

I have ordered a T-Mobile 4g LTE Signal Booster to help bring the signal in the house and hopefully give me better speeds?!?

So here are the questions:

1. Would a better phone have a better hotspot and give better speeds? If so, what phone would be the best to use on T-Mobile?

2. Does the Signal Booster from Tmo boost what is outside or does it use so if I have a phone that does not have that Band supported it wont matter or does it create a new band for the house?

Thanks

 

[Rukbat]

1. Probably not. A hotspot is just a router, and phones are capable of a lot more than just Gigabit internet - the internet isn't, though. For speed, check what the phone itself is getting. go to speedtest.net and check your speeds. If you're getting 2 down and 6 up, the hotspot can't get anything more. (The overall speed is the speed of the slowest part of the link - always has been and always will be.) If that's where the trouble is, T-Mobile isn't your best choice. Your best choice is the carrier that gives you the best signal.

2. A "booster" simply ...

Has to sit in a spot that gets good signal --95dbm or better (lower numerically) from the tower and transmits a strong signal to the tower

and

is positioned so that the phone gets a good signal from the booster and transmits a strong signal to the booster.

Unless the only place you can get strong signal (in both directions) is far outside the house, you don't need a booster. For example, if the signal is good on one side of the attic, or with the Motorola mounted on the ridgepole of the attic, that's where it goes. Then use a USB cable to the router, located in a position so that you get a good wifi signal all over the house. It won't increase your voice and text signal, but that's not what you're aiming for, so it doesn't matter.

As for bands, you can only use the band used by the carrier at the location of your home. If T-Mobile is using 600MHz where you are, you don't have much choice - you need a V30. Or you could go back to Verizon if they give you good signal on the Motorola. (Be careful of their "booster" though - it's the Samsung and it's not worth much [but sells for a lot].) You need to be able to receive and transmit strong signals to and from the tower on the band the carrier uses. (A weak enough signal is going to require lots of retries, as packets get torn up by noise, which cuts the effective speed way down. If 90% of your packets get lost, 90% of your speed does too.)

 

[racedog]

I have both the V30 and an S9+. The V30 is "supposed" to be band 71 compatible but neither of my V30's picks up band 71. Both my wife's S9 and my S9+ pick up band 71 and a stronger signal than either of the V30's. So, I don't recommend the V30 if you're in a band 71 area. I didn't even know that band 71 had gone live where we live until we got our s9 and s9+.