I have yet to see a 5G home internet solution that's actually useful. It seems to be a "budget" internet option more than a viable alternative to most other solutions.
Latency and speed are slow, and some of the providers mess with/block certain traffic (IKEv2 etc).
Here in New Zealand 4G has proved to work surprisely well for FWA (Fixed Wireless Access). I think the important thing is that the providers need to be very strict at limiting the number of customers they sell to. Here, the providers will proactively stop selling new FWA connection in a certain area the tower sector serving that area is getting close to capacity limits. They'll also check where the customer is located and ensure they can actually provide a decent service. This check is done automatically off coverage and capacity data.
Most of the major FWA providers are mobile phone carriers, so both mobile and FWA customers actually use the same tower/spectrum/etc so the general increase in demand (especially from mobile given they can't stop selling new mobile servcies) sometimes results in a good service in Year 1 degrading to poorer service in subsquent years. However the carriers can easily resolve that by adding more 4G carriers, deploying 5G, and even building new cell sites (which kills two birds with one stone -- better coverage for mobile users and more capacity for FWA users).
When FWA first came out I confess that I thought it was a silly idea until my eldery mother accepted an incentive from her provider (cheaper monthly fee) if she moved onto FWA (from ADSL previously). She's zero complaints. And sure enough it works well for a low-end user -- emails, Facebook, WhatsApp, Netflix, YouTube, etc all work just as good on FWA as it does on fibre/DSL/Cable/etc. She happens to be close enough to the tower and that tower has also been upgraded and has heaps of 4G carriers so the service is consisently good.
YMMV but when done well, 4G/5G FWA is a great option for low-end users.
I'm writing from 4G, the same that I use to work remotely as a software engineer. It's not even a dedicated 'home internet' solution, just an unlimited data plan that I use with a decent modem/antenna.
(Yes obviously latency is worse than fibre, I would probably hate it if I was still into FPS gaming etc., but in practice it's fine.)
(When I set it up it was better and cheaper than the copper options, fibre not available. Fibre or Starlink would now probably be better, but still each much more expensive, even ignoring one-time costs. I don't need it/not worth it. Idk about latency but I could certainly get more bandwidth out of one-time costs on LTE too.)
CGNAT is killer though, the random connection drops when you don't get a static IP from your cellular provider cause random connection drops whenever their CGNAT gateway burps or misbehaves.
Most people on cellphones don't notice, but it becomes oh so noticeable when your interacting with it every day.
I tried out (US) T-Mobile's small business internet, and while it wasn't useful for me, if I was a little more normal or had worked a little harder with sales to get what I needed, it would be fine. The v6 connectivity was pretty good, v4 is CGNAT, unless you sign up for a static IP, which needs an EIN business account; the sales rep can sign you up for a static IP with a SSN business account, but it will be deleted and they won't add it back.
Also, I forgot which equipment they gave me, but it had terrible buffer bloat, and did some nasty nasty arp spoofing when I placed it on my network and made everything bad, and it wouldn't let me put it on XX.2.0/24 and have a static route for XX.0.0/24 so maybe I could keep it roughly contained. Maaaaybe I could have done something with VLANs, but I was done at that point. I'm still grumpy because it took 3 months and contacting the CEO email address to get the bill settled, but they did settle it. Not exactly a risk free trial in my book.
Speed and latency was good though, as long as you didn't hit bufferbloat. I don't remember exactly, but 500M+ down, 200M+ up, < 25 ms ping; CGNAT brought the speeds down to about 100M, but most CDNs are v6 capable now, and most people aren't that bothered by CGNAT. Obviously you and I and a lot of others here have reasons to want their own v4 address, but a lot of people in a lot of places can't get one on any home internet, so. Of course, speed and latency vary a lot by your reception, but I live on a heavily forested and very hilly island; I am at a high point, but surrounded by trees so eh?
Eh, my ISP (Comcast) has extremely unreliable internet across two different homes I've lived in, to the point that I absolutely rely on having both a 5G modem and a wired one. If my 5G signal was strong enough to keep me going on a rainy day, I would absolutely ditch the wired connection and its flaky mysterious dropped packets.
Don't get me wrong, I'd much rather have a wired connection. But if my isp can't even be bothered to give me a functional connection more than 90% of the time...
I spent 20 hours diagnosing my internet in a situation that sounded like yours. The solution actually showed itself: the copper from the street pigtail had a connection end that was improperly installed. It grounded into the protective braided metal around it, and each time the isp came to diagnose, they disconnected the bad wire then measured from the street and said "no issues". I felt really triumphant when that was corrected.
I just switched from long-range wireless to Starlink basic. It's 50% cheaper and much, much more reliable. Speeds are comparable (when the long-range wifi wasn't down, which it was pretty often). Long-range wifi had a data cap with crazy overage fees, Starlink is unlimited.
The priority service wasn’t much faster 6-8 months ago but seems to be much faster from what he been reading and seeing recently, but it might’ve relative to how busy a particular area is
