Hands on with AT&T Air Internet

So, a little back story first. I’ve had fiber Internet through TDS Telecom for the last 15 years. In general, I’ve been pretty happy with it. I’ve gradually reduced the number of services (removing phone and TV) over the years, but at around $100 for 300 Mbps both ways, the cost has remained relatively high.

I was on the phone with AT&T Wireless the other day, and the rep inquired whether I knew about AT&T’s Internet options. I replied that I was aware of AT&T Fiber, and that I wasn’t in their coverage area (due to TDS having exclusive fiber service rights in my neighborhood). But he suggested that I might be interested in AT&T Air Internet, which is a 5G wireless whole home option. Because I’m an AT&T wireless customer, the cost would work out to about $47 a month for the equivalent 300 Mbps service (although up is a bit less). No contract, no installation, and aside from the wireless device, no additional equipment. And I could try it for a month to see how well it worked.

I work from home and have a lot of devices on my network, including multiple PCs, phones, smart TVs, Xboxes, smart home gadgets, a NAS, and a Plex server, so I was skeptical. But I decided to give it a go. It came yesterday. It’s all wireless, so there’s a very small footprint…basically just the device and a power cable. This is interesting because I can put it in my dining room, which is completely central to my home.

Instead of just plugging my existing Google Nest Wi-Fi Pro setup into it, I decided to try just using the AT&T equipment. And so far, I’m very impressed. According to the app’s speed test, I’m pulling about 680 Mbps down and 100 Mbps up. The AT&T Smart Home Monitor app lets me walk around my house in AR and maps my signal strength visually, and there are no dead zones in my entire house. Compare that to Nest, which required three nodes to cover everything. The Wi-Fi network is hidden by default and requires anyone connecting to know the SSID, which improves security somewhat. The base station and app provide a QR code for other devices to connect easily. Granted, the Google Home app does a lot of this too, but otherwise I’m not messing around much with the settings.

At this point, I’m trying to decide whether to just connect my Nest Hub into it and call it a day or to try porting all my other devices over to the AT&T Wi-Fi and possibly eliminating Nest from the equation. Considering all the smart home gadgets, it might be a Herculean effort. The Nest is also hard-wired into my home Ethernet, and I guess that might make local traffic a bit faster, but honestly, if all my Internet traffic is cellular, then I’m not sure whether that just adds a layer of complexity for not a lot of benefit.