Skip to main content

T-Mobile announces expanded 5G Home Internet access across southern U.S.

On Tuesday morning, T-Mobile announced that it has expanded access to its residential 5G Home Internet service in 51 cities and towns throughout Florida, Georgia, and North and South Carolina.

Specifically, this is the service that T-Mobile launched in April. Subscribers to the service receive a wireless “Internet Gateway” device to install in their homes, which can be managed with a companion app. The Internet Gateway is all wireless, as opposed to a traditional wired broadband modem. In theory, can be installed anywhere in your home in approximately 15 minutes.

5G on the all new iPad mini.
Apple

T-Mobile promises that Home Internet customers currently receive average speeds of 50Mbps, and can use a 4G or 5G signal depending on local coverage. It charges $60/month, with no data caps, rental fees, or annual contracts. A currently running promotion promises a permanent $10/month reduction in fees for customers who sign up for autopay.

Recommended Videos

However, Home Internet is also subject to T-Mobile’s somewhat controversial “data prioritization” policy, which shifts users to the back of the bandwidth queue if they’ve used more than 50GB of data in a given month. You still get technically unlimited data on a Home Internet plan, but it’s subject to slowdowns at peak hours if you’re over the 50GB soft cap.

Home Internet is also subject to T-Mobile’s somewhat controversial “data prioritization” policy.

It’s also not universally automatically available to all interested customers; signups may be restricted by T-Mobile’s local network capacity. As a final caveat, Home Internet was initially incompatible with Hulu at launch, which does not appear to have been fixed at the time of writing.

The Tuesday-morning expansion to Home Internet boosts its coverage area to over 600 places nationwide, according to T-Mobile.

“Today, thousands more households now have access to fast, unlimited high-speed Internet,” said T-Mobile’s Dow Draper, Executive Vice President of Emerging Products at T-Mobile (not to be confused with the Mad Men character), in a press release. “We’re expanding access in places that have never had a real choice when it comes to home broadband, where people are fed up with cable and telco ISPs.”

T-Mobile’s strategy with Home Internet is reasonably transparent: It is targeting competitors, particularly in small-town and rural markets, by specifically appealing to their dissatisfaction with the current state of play in American ISPs. It cites the American Customer Satisfaction Index’s 2021 benchmarks in claiming that, at 65%, Americans are generally less happy with their Internet service providers than any other industry.

The 51 locations that now have access to Home Internet are listed on T-Mobile’s original press release. Noteworthy new markets include Jacksonville, Tallahassee, the Villages, Clewiston, and the Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford area in Florida; Albany, Cornelia, Dalton, Dublin, Gainesville, and Jefferson in Georgia; Asheville, Fayetteville, Mount Airy, and the Raleigh-Cary area in North Carolina; and Columbia, Newberry, Spartanburg, Sumter, and the Myrtle Beach-Conway-North Myrtle Beach area in South Carolina.

Thomas Hindmarch
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Thomas Hindmarch is a freelance writer with 20 years' experience in the gaming and technology fields. He has previously…
T-Mobile just made its 5G Home Internet plan cheaper; here’s the new price
Cell phone tower shooting off pink beams with a 5G logo next to it.

T-Mobile, the nation's third-largest carrier, recently dropped the price of its home internet plan. The company is also offering a prepaid Mastercard for customers who sign up for the service.

As reported by CNET, the T-Mobile Home Internet plan is decreasing in price from $60 to $50 per month. This new rate includes a $5 monthly discount for enrolling in automatic payments. Customers can save up to $20 monthly when bundling the service with the company's Go5G Next, Go5G Plus, or Magenta Max phone plans.

Read more
T-Mobile is getting rid of its misleading ‘Price Lock’ policy
T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert standing in front of a banner that reads Internet Freedom.

T-Mobile just got into some trouble with the National Advertising Program (NAD), a part of the BBB National Programs, an independent non-profit organization, for advertising its supposed “Price Lock” policy for 5G internet service.

Basically, the premise behind the “Price Lock” was a promise not to increase prices for customers who were on the Un-Contract Promise: “Starting January 18, 2024, customers activating or switching to an eligible rate plan get our Price Lock guarantee that only you can change what you pay—and we mean it!”

Read more
5 carriers you should use instead of T-Mobile
The T-Mobile logo on a smartphone.

When it comes to performance, quality, and reliability, T-Mobile is undoubtedly one of the best carriers in the U.S. It offers the fastest speeds and the broadest coverage with reasonably priced plans that include quite a few perks.

However, that may still add up to more than you want to pay; top-notch performance comes with a higher price tag attached. The good news is that T-Mobile is far from the only game in town. In addition to the other two of the big three U.S. carriers -- AT&T and Verizon -- there are dozens of Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) that piggyback on the big carrier networks with more affordable plans that offer the same coverage and great performance at a fraction of the price. You’ll get fewer perks, and customer service may not be as responsive, but those may be reasonable tradeoffs for how much you’ll save.

Read more