The FCC listings for a new T-Mobile 5G Home Internet Gateway, which we first found rumor of back in October, have been found.
The device is manufactured by Arcadyan Technology Corporation, a company with a history of making networking devices such as Fios gateways for Verizon. The documentation appears to have been listed on November 10th.
The device, with a model number of KVD21, matches the original picture we acquired in October and features a squared-off screen on the front of the device. Navigation of the on-screen menus are done via hardware buttons this time around, as the display does not support touch input. The gateway supports all of T-Mobile’s Sub-6 5G bands (no millimeter-wave).
The full user manual was included in the FCC documentation. It shows the device sports 2 Ethernet ports and a USB-C port (labeled “USB-C LAN”) on the back, just like the Nokia. This time around, the power delivery is done via USB-C as well, via a second USB-C port.
Unfortunately, and much to the likely disappointment of the enthusiast crowd, there are no external antenna connectors. The device’s internals, however, seem to be pretty modular, albeit tightly fit. They show the same internal antenna connectors as the Nokia model, so enthusiasts will likely find a way to mod this unit like they did the Nokia model to connect their own antenna hardware.
It does look like there may be more disassembly needed to access the connections than there is on the Nokia model. We’ll have to wait and see just how easy (or difficult) antenna mods will be once the units begin arriving in customer hands.
The gateway uses a MediaTek T750 ARM processor at its core. Notably, that chip supports 5G Carrier Aggregation. This means it supports the ability to connect to multiple 5G signals at once and combine their power.
The gateway also supports 4×4 WiFi 6 and appears to use the same 192.168.12.x subnet that the Nokia uses.
It remains to be seen what the software side of things will look like for the new 5G Home Internet gateway. According to a very blurry screenshot in the manual, the web-based GUI is extremely basic, simply showing signal strength and connection status.
There’s also a note in the manual saying “The advanced settings are not available with this version release of the web GUI”. With luck, this means a future firmware release (maybe even the one the device ends up shipping with) will include “advanced settings”.
Hopefully T-Mobile has managed to improve the feature set of this model compared to the Nokia, and the firmware that comes on the device has a bit more customization. Even simple things like custom DNS settings and manual band locking would be a very welcome improvement.
There’s no word on when the new 5G Home Internet gateways will begin shipping out to customers. We’ll be sure to share when we know more here on The T-Mo Report. Are you looking forward to the new gateways? What features would you like to see on the software side of things? Let us know in the comments below!
Special thanks to SadoDaimyo on the T-Mobile Discord for spotting this!
