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Forum Discussion
Will 5G SA support on MR6150 be reassessed in the future?
I have two MR6150 hotspots connected to the T-Mobile network, and sometimes they will try to carrier aggregate with LTE bands that appear to be congested in my area. I have seen the two hotspots sitting right next to each other where one decides to connect to LTE B2 and achieves speeds of around 400Mbps, and the other connects to LTE B66 and can barely break 100Mbps. This is from the same location with the same T-Mobile SIM and same plan.
I would love to know what is causing the different behaviors when the two identical hotspots are right next to each other. Sometimes I can get the one that gravitates toward B66 to connect to B2 after a reboot, or driving around with it, but it doesn't reliably stay there. When it is on B2, it performs great, when it is on B66 the performance is horrible.
I did some research and I found out that the 5G Standalone mode used to be offered but was removed, as discussed in this thread: MR6150 - Cannot connect to 5G only bands | NETGEAR Communities
The reasoning for its removal from the firmware seems ridiculous. It reads to me like "oh because we felt like it and you shouldn't use it anyway, Netgear knows better than you and based on a few lab tests we see no real world use case for this setting". Since that response was now around 2 years ago, and in that time I think attitudes toward 5G Standalone are changing, will 5G Standalone ever be added back in to the firmware?
As a test I downgraded my device to a version 10 firmware, and it is able to connect to 5G Standalone, and the performance is far improved from when it was randomly connecting to B66. I went from unreliable and unpredictable speeds to predictable and good speeds.
For now, I think I will continue to run the old firmware so I can have the 5G Standalone feature that was taken away for no reason.
Alternatively, I would love a way to blacklist bands that I don't want the device to connect to. If there were checkboxes for each band and I could simply disable N71, so the device would stay on B2, the performance would be better for me.
As time passes and carrier attitudes shift toward preferring 5G Standalone, is there ever going to come a time when this feature will be reconsidered and put back into the new firmware?
Thanks,
Kirk
5 Replies
Hi kirk137,
Netgear removed 5G SA support on the MR6150 because AT&T and Verizon don’t use it (so the device couldn’t be certified) and their lab tests showed NSA usually performed better since it leverages LTE. They’ve said unless carriers widely adopt SA or performance clearly improves, it’s unlikely to return in public firmware. That said, if you need SA for testing on a private or specific network, Netgear has offered to provide special builds if you contact them directly.
For now, your best options are staying on the older v10 firmware (since it keeps SA working), or requesting Netgear to add band-blacklisting/band-locking in future releases. Otherwise, random differences between B2 and B66 connections are just how the RAN steers devices under current firmware.
MaryMacdonald, since I am on the T-Mobile network, which is a native 5G standalone network, why should I bow down to what AT&T and Verizon prefer? I am pretty sure T-Mobile would prefer that their customers be on 5G SA.
Would Netgear offer the 5G SA option for T-Mobile? What is the proper avenue to contact them?
kirk137 T-Mobile has been leading with 5G SA, and customers on their network shouldn’t be limited by certification requirements from carriers that don’t even support it. At the moment, Netgear has taken a “one-firmware-for-all-carriers” approach, which is why SA was disabled. That said, Netgear has acknowledged that special builds with SA can be provided if users request them directly. The best path forward is to open a case through the Netgear Support portal and clearly state that you’re on T-Mobile’s native 5G SA network, where performance is better with SA. If more T-Mobile users do the same, it increases the chance Netgear will either restore SA generally or release a T-Mobile–specific firmware.
Okay, thanks! I'll send them an email and we'll see what happens.