The ever-famous Home Internet service offered by T-Mobile hit a bit of a snag this week.
Apparently, a firmware update for the newest consumer model of gateway, the Sagemcom Fast 5688W, has caused about 24% of units to lose all communication with the network.
According to sources and confirmed via an internal memo shown below, the “MR3” update for the device, with version number 1.2.74, has caused approximately 34,000 units to essentially brick themselves. The units are unable to connect to the network, and representatives are therefore unable to push any fixes to the unit.
As mentioned, T-Mobile quickly began an investigation into the issue and was in direct communication with Sagemcom to figure out what was going on. Affected devices were sent to Sagemcom and steps to reproduce the issue were even found and submitted.
The solution for affected customers is, unfortunately, a modem swap. Support has apparently been attempting to factory reset customer devices and, when that fails, giving out the Arcadyan model as a replacement device.
T-Mobile has since pulled the update, so no additional Sagemcom models will receive the buggy update. About 124,000 units received the update before it was pulled. The firmware is still listed on the T-Mobile support page for the gateway. There’s no word on when the company will fix and roll out an updated firmware at this time.
Internally, the update was apparently designed to fix a rebooting issue affecting 10k to 20k users. The gateways were apparently rebooting themselves multiple times a day, and the update was supposed to fix this.
Customers that have received this update on their device but are having no issues have nothing to worry about. The malfunction, if the device is affected, would be immediately noticeable.
If your unit is affected, you can contact customer service to have your unit replaced.
