5G Fixed Wireless Internet: Why You Should Try It

5G fixed wireless internet—also known as 5G home internet—is a relatively new type of internet service that gives you an internet connection over a 5G cellular phone network. Although availability is mostly limited to big cities and metro areas, 5G fixed wireless internet is well worth trying out because it’s fast, relatively cheap, and easy to set up.

Plans from 5G home internet providers like Verizon and T-Mobile don’t have annual contracts or data caps, making them more cost-effective than many cable internet plans. See below for a full breakdown of the pros and cons of 5G home internet and recommendations on the best 5G fixed wireless plans.

*w/ Auto Pay. Available in select areas. w/ Auto Pay and select 5G mobile plans. Available in select areas. Consumer data usage is subject to the usage restrictions set forth in Verizon’s terms of service; visit: https://www.verizon.com/support/customer-agreement/ for more information about 5G Home and LTE Home Internet or https://www.verizon.com/about/terms-conditions/verizon-customer-agreement for Fios internet.

†w/ Auto Pay. Regulatory fees included in monthly price for qualified accounts. See full terms. Delivered via 5G cellular network; speeds vary due to factors affecting cellular networks, including data prioritization.

^‡Price includes $5 Auto Renew discount. Taxes and fees extra. Additional device purchase required.

Cellular carriers Verizon and T-Mobile are the two major providers of 5G home internet at the moment. They both have 5G home internet plans with respectable speeds and unlimited data for $60 a month.

Verizon 5G Home Internet gives you a 50% discount on the monthly bill when you bundle your service with one of its unlimited phone plans, making it an especially good deal for Verizon phone customers. T-Mobile 5G Home Internet costs just $40 per month when you bundle the service with the Magenta Max phone plan.

Starry Internet is another great option—technically its service isn’t advertised as 5G, but it works in much the same way as Verizon and T-Mobile’s 5G home plans do. Ultra Home Internet meanwhile is geared mostly towards rural customers, with higher pricing and stricter data limits, similar to satellite internet.

Pro tip: 

Some 5G home internet plans are faster, others are cheaper. Use our “How Much Internet Speed Do I Need?” tool to see how much bandwidth you need for your home so you know what to pick.

What is 5G fixed wireless internet?

5G fixed wireless internet (also commonly known as 5G home internet) is a service that uses wireless telecommunications to give you an internet connection in your home. It first emerged with the advent of 5G in 2019 and represents one of several ways that phone companies have been trying to use cellular networks for things other than cell phones. It’s mostly available through cellular carriers like Verizon and T-Mobile, who use networks of small-cell 5G transmitters to communicate with a modem installed in your home in order to give you an internet connection.

This represents a much different approach to home networking. Traditional broadband internet types like fiber and cable give you a wired connection to your home using cables buried beneath the ground. By contrast, a 5G connection is totally wireless, using radio signals over a cell phone network.

5G fixed wireless internet is relatively fast, easy to set up, and comes at an unbeatable price. However, a 5G connection can be more unreliable compared to cable and fiber internet. You save money with a 5G home internet plan, but you may have to deal with the occasional random disconnect.

Two good reasons to get 5G fixed wireless internet—and two good reasons not to

5G fixed wireless is fast: 5G can be quite fast because it has fewer users compared to older 4G LTE phone networks. 5G carriers like Verizon also use higher frequency radio bands like millimeter-wave and C-band spectrum, giving them a lot more capacity to carry data at extremely fast rates. 5G fixed wireless internet speeds usually average out around 100–300 Mbps, similar to a mid-range fiber or cable connection.

Pro tip: 

Download our speed test app to see how much bandwidth you get on your current connection. Hopefully a 5G plan can give your speeds a boost!

Pro tip: 

Take our speed test to see how much bandwidth you get on your current connection. Hopefully a 5G plan can give your speeds a boost!

5G fixed wireless is cheap: Cellular carriers Verizon and T-Mobile are trying to compete with traditional internet providers for market share, and to get a leg up they’ve tossed aside a lot of the annoying pricing tricks and extra fees that are common on many cable internet plans. You don’t have to pay for equipment or installation. You get unlimited data. And you can cancel any time without paying early termination fees.

5G availability is limited: Since 5G is such a new technology, it isn’t widely available nationwide. There are fewer 5G internet providers compared to cable and fiber internet providers, and the 5G rollout is mostly concentrated in urban areas and big cities. It’s not likely that rural areas can enjoy 5G internet any time soon.

And you may have recurring disconnects: One of our experts on HighSpeedInternet.com recently signed up for Verizon 5G Home Internet and loved it—but after a few weeks, he started having technical problems, with the connection dropping off and requiring a restart multiple times a week.

Unfortunately, based on what we’ve read in reviews and online forums, random disconnects seem to be a somewhat common issue with 5G home internet—suggesting that 5G carriers still have some kinks to work out. So it may not be for you if you depend on an ultra-reliable internet connection at home.