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> T-Mobile has signed up 1m+ people to their new Home Internet over 5G, and all of them have really meaningful bufferbloat issues. I've been pointing folks who reach out to this thread about cake-autorate and sqm-autorate, but ideally it would be fixed at a network level, just not sure how to apply pressure (I'm in contact with the T-Mobile Home Internet team, but I think this is above their heads).

[RR] While there may indeed be a bufferbloat issue, it is also very possibly a capacity problem.  T-mobile’s home internet offering is at 600MHz where the maximum downlink speeds are around 17Mbps (aggregate) assuming that the entire 35MHz of available spectrum is used and its about 10Mbps per user on the uplink. It’s a little complicated because … . (This assumes QPSK encoding and a coding rate around 0.7. You can double those capacity numbers roughly for 16-QAM however the range will drop dramatically.) The point is that when there are N users in a “sector” (beamforming can be used though I am not sure whether T-mobile does or not), each user gets on average 17/N Mbps downlink, and can compete for access to 10/N Mbps uplink.  If N is on the order of 100, you can see that transmission rates are severely limited.  I have first hand experience of this.  When my download speeds come to a screeching halt on my iPhome, e.g. when I am downloading an app from that app store, all I have to do is look at the top of my screen, and EVERY TIME it says … drum roll please … “Lucky you! You are now on our latest and greatest 5G network!”  OK, it just indicates “5G”, but either way, I want to throw this iPhone through some t_Mobile store window! JJ