T-Mobile’s Home Internet service is apparently booming, and the company is getting ahead of the surge by adding a third company to its list of manufacturers making Home Internet consumer gateways.
The new gateway, first spotted by members of a Facebook group by way of an FCC listing, is shown off in detail in a PDF manual hosted on the T-Mobile website. We here at The T-Mo Report also independently confirmed details about the device via internal documents shared with us, which are embedded below.
The gateway, model number “FAST 5688W”, is manufactured by Sagemcom. They’re known for making other broadband equipment like modems, routers, set top boxes, and more. Those who have used cable companies like Charter Spectrum for their ISP may recognize the name.
Users on Reddit were quick to point out that hardware created by Sagemcom in the past hasn’t exactly been the best. Some users go so far as to highly recommend customers steer clear of this new gateway simply because of Sagemcom’s track record.
According to the documents, this new gateway isn’t an upgrade to the previous models. Instead, it seems T-Mobile is having such high demand for their Home Internet service that they needed even more gateways than expected. This new model will supplement the existing supply of gateways made by Nokia and Arcadyan.
One difference this new model has, however, is that it supports 5G band N77. This is what is referred to as C-Band spectrum, which T-Mobile acquired a chunk of in an auction last year. T-Mobile has yet to deploy any of this spectrum, but when they do, this new gateway will be able to take advantage of it.
The Sagemcom FAST 5688W is scheduled to become available starting August 15th. At that point, customers receiving a new gateway will receive one of the three models available.
