Do 5g home internet modems get better cell reception than mobile phones?

I haven't used these 5G boxes so just speculating but I've heard that they can get better receptions with fixed antennas but the speeds won't be that different. If you're getting meh speeds on your phone, I can't imagine the dedicated 5G box being much better.

It’s a tricky one - to the extent that I’d say if you have any way of testing out the actual broadband service for a week or so without being fully tied into the contract that’s by far your best bet.

You’ve got differences in antenna design, which will not only impact signal strength but may have different MIMO capabilities too; those could fundamentally alter the speeds between devices. And then you’ve got the cell towers potentially treating the phone and router differently either based on the device type (identifiable from the IMEI) or based on the whether the SIM is registered for broadband or general use. And on top of that all the power profile stuff that you were already thinking of could absolutely be impacting the phone’s connection too.

I used a 5G router for a few weeks while I was waiting for a fiber install a while back and it got speeds in the hundreds of Mbps without an issue, which was a good 5x or so faster than my phone was getting, although it sounds like your tests were a lot slower on the phone side so I’m not sure if that helps much.

The speed and latency fluctuated enough to be quite annoying on the 5G router - it really made me appreciate that a decent fixed line connection just feels consistently snappy by comparison - but if the alternative were DSL I’d consider it a more than worthwhile upgrade!

I'm in a different country and obviously with a different carrier, but I currently am using stationary home 5G. I did some very loose vibes testing where I just tried to see if I noticed the difference between my old and new service in general use rather than explicitly profiling it. For me it behaved more-or-less the same. Streaming, zoom calls, playing a few online games all were rare to be able notice any difference. I also downloaded some games from Steam and I think it happened to be faster than my old service, but that was just luck I think. I also am lucky enough that I had windows facing the spot it said to point it at, and that spot looked to only be a couple hundred meters away, so my experience may not line up with yours at all.

Now to directly answer your question about if you can expect it to behave similarly to your phone: in my personal experience, no. The 5G phones on my plan have significantly more stable speeds. My wife's I think was pegged at almost exactly 100Mbps. In various speed tests over time I've seen like 60Mbps to 900Mbps from the home box. According to the carrier's description this is because they give phones priority and home boxes excess capacity. So from my personal experience it seems they have target speeds for phones and boxes can access what's left of the capacity. You wouldn't be hitting capacity though, at least not with your tests that give you basically no service, so maybe you'd get lucky with the larger antenna of the fixed box helping you out.

I also haven't tried intentionally misplacing my box (or external antenna), but they are stated to have a strong preference for windows on the side of the building that faces the nearest tower and want to be as high as possible. You may be able to leverage an external antenna to address location problems, but that really depends on your unit. For example, if you have a lower floor unit on the far side of the tower the locations you'd be allowed to put an antenna are probably not going to be very good.

Something that may be worth trying is to see if any home 5G carriers offer trial periods. Mine offered I think around 2 weeks where cancellation in that time would have it all fully refunded. I could be wrong, but I think this is somewhat common in home 5G because the service can be so variable.

I'm French and have been having the same problematic, here are a few points that might help you:

• Cable does exist in France and have been the standard in any respectable city before the fiber rising, there are less and less offers available as the fiber infra grows and isps push their better/more expansive offers. You can look at your eligibility with various main and low-cost providers such as Orange, Sosh, Free, Bouygues, SFR, Red,... With a bit of luck you'll find a reasonable cable offer
• Orange being the best provider or the one with the best mobile coverage doesn't mean it's the one that you want. Where I live the Orange relay tower is farther than the SFR/Bouygues one, I opted for an SFR offer and have better results. The best you can do to get an idea of what'll fit you is have a look at the ariase map for theoretical coverage and/or invite a few friends with other carriers to test their coverage and bandwidth at your place
• If you find an isp with a good coverage in your home, beware of the 4G/5G offers prices. They're usually as pricy as the cable/fiber ones. What I ended up doing is buying a 5G router on Amazon that costs as much as a few months of such subscriptions and I'll keep for future needs, and subscribing for a low-cost mobile offer with limited data. You can use that sim card in your router and make your own 5G solution. If you don't use more than 200-500GB a month it's a way better deal

I hope it helps, good luck in your endeavor

I had the tmobile (us) version for a while. It was plenty fast for my purposes, but i had to find a good spot for it (in the attic). If you’re high enough and have a window that faces the tower, I’d expect performance at least superior to your dsl.

For another US view: I had looked into Verizon's home 5G for a while when I was sick of my cable carrier's pricing the last place I lived and the sales people claimed to have dedicated towers with limited subscription slots for their fixed wireless.

While I don't totally believe that I could imagine a dedicated cell at a tower using a specific section of their spectrum and a reasonable oversubscription (eg sell 5Gbps worth of peak speed for a 500Mbps uplink) reserved for fixed wireless.

So it's possible that not only the larger space to layout an antenna but also the infrastructure piece could mean better fixed wireless performance than on your mobile.

Does the modem have a plug for an external antenna? That may be what you need. You could grab a directional antenna or just a larger external antenna to place at the window.

I can’t help beyond this, but you should be able to find others online that have documented the impact of an external antenna.

I have T-Mobile home Internet here in the US but I can actually see the tower out my window. I get about 500 Mbps down, about 75 Mbps up. I use Google Fi for cellular which can use T-Mobile but I haven't done a speed test with it, I can try one later and report back. I had tried a portable 5g hotspot that got a max of 300 Mbps so it is definitely better than that, so I expect it'll definitely be faster than my phone. Antenna size matters, so the larger antenna in the modem should mean better signal.