Why You Can Trust CNET T-Mobile's $60 Home Internet service, powered by 5G, expands nationwide
The service will fall back to 4G at times, but offers consumers another choice in service.
T-Mobile's long-teased Home Internet offering is exiting the pilot stage and becoming a real product. As part of its Un-carrier Next event on Wednesday, the nation's second-largest wireless carrier finally added details to its plans to take on Comcast, Charter, rural broadband providers and AT&T and Verizon in the home broadband arena.
Available today, the new service takes advantage of T-Mobile's 4G LTE and 5G networks. It will cost a flat $60 per month (with automatic payments enabled) and has no taxes, contracts or equipment fees for the 4G/5G modem rental that also doubles as a Wi-Fi router. The Home Internet product offers unlimited data with T-Mobile touting that its home internet service also has no throttling.
You don't have to be a T-Mobile wireless customer to sign up for the service. If you decide to cancel all you will need to do is return the router back to the carrier.
Locating local internet providers
Read more: Hands-on with T-Mobile's Home Internet service
The carrier says it will be making the service available to 30 million Americans to start across the 48 contiguous states and Hawaii, with "expected" average download speeds of 100Mbps. For reference, Netflix recommends download speeds of 5Mbps for watching in HD or 25Mbps for 4K streaming while Zoom recommends download speeds of 3.8Mbps with upload speeds of 3Mbps for 1080p HD group video chatting.
Locating local internet providers
T-Mobile's Home Internet router.
T-Mobile says that of those 30 million people, 10 million are located in rural America with the company adding that it "plans to continue to expand access" in the future. Those interested will be able to check if their address is eligible for the service on T-Mobile's website.
Wednesday's launch marks the next step in a long journey for T-Mobile, which has been talking about its ambitions to use 5G to deliver a home internet service for years. In recent months it has expanded its pilot program from relying on 4G LTE to being able to use 5G while adding additional cities and towns in preparation for a widespread rollout.
In March the carrier raised the price of its pilot program from $50 to $60 per month for new customers, with the company revealing at its analyst day last month that it ended 2020 with 100,000 subscribers in the pilot. T-Mobile said at that event that it would target rural areas with limited home broadband competition as well as urban areas with multiple providers.
The company hopes to have 500,000 Home Internet subscribers by the end of this year, with 7-8 million customers by 2025.